Torpedo!

CHAPTER 19

By the time Admiral Zurahv had disposed of a stack of paperwork that had accumulated on his desk the message from the submarine that had been bumped by the U.S.S. Orca was at the bottom of a small stack of messages from other Soviet submarine commanders. The Admiral picked up the stack of messages and began to read them, his beefy face beginning to glow with rage as he read messages from his submarine commanders that told of harassment of Soviet ballistic missile submarines by American attack submarines. The tone of each message was the same: worry. The submarine commanders, unused to being constantly followed, unable to understand why they were periodically subjected to high decibel blasts of sonar beams from the American submarines, wanted information. What was going on? Why were the Americans interfering with them in the open sea? Was there any change in the world political situation?

When he reached the message at the bottom of the stack and read it he smashed the palm of his big right hand against his desk and bellowed for his aide. The naval officer came in and stood at attention.

“I want a meeting of my staff at once,” the Admiral snapped. “They are to drop whatever they are doing and come here at once.” The aide saluted and left and Admiral Zurahv picked up the stack of messages and read through them again, slowly.

The staff officers arrived in a group within five minutes. They sat down in chairs in front of the Admiral’s desk and listened to his reading of the messages. When he came to the last message he stopped.

“Pay particular attention to this message. It gives evidence of an attack on one of our ships by an American submarine while our ship was in international waters.” He read the message slowly.

“He has sustained some minor damage to his hull, so far as his diver could see,” the Admiral rumbled. “That is not cause to bring him home to base but the state of his mind is more than cause to order him home. That will be done at once.” He nodded at his aide who made notes on a pad he held in his lap. “Bring him home and relieve him of command.” A captain sitting at the right end of the line of chairs cleared his throat.

“Comrade Admiral, I understand your feelings. The man is obviously frightened. But if we relieve him of command who do we put in his place? We are very short of qualified nuclear commanding officers, sir. Bring him home, yes, put his ship in drydock and get a good estimate of whatever damage was done and then, if I may suggest it Comrade, a private audience with you should put enough starch in his backbone to overcome this uncertainty he now feels.”

“He doesn’t need starch, he needs steel in his backbone,” the Admiral growled. “But I agree, we are short of nuclear skippers. Bring him home and get clearance for immediate entry to the drydock for his ship. I’ll handle him personally.

“Now we come to the heart of this business. The Americans have to be taught a lesson. Let’s discuss what form that lesson will take.”

“What form would you suggest, Comrade?” the captain who had spoken before said.

“What I’d like to do is to give them a full broadside of ballistic missiles, Captain Bogomolets,” the Admiral growled. “Incinerate the bastards! And then give the same dose to China and have an end to this bullshit about who is the major power in the world.”

“Unfortunately,” Captain Bogomolets said, “that course of action, while it is one I approve of, would require permission from the Politburo.”

Admiral Zurahv leaned back in his chair and the chair creaked in protest against his great weight. “I have information, Captain, that the entire American retaliation that we have experienced and are now experiencing is being conducted by an American admiral by the name of Brannon and without the knowledge of his president or his Congress.” He paused as his aide cleared his throat.

“With all due respect, Comrade Admiral,” the aide said. “Our land-based nuclear missiles are under the direct command of the Army, and the Army. .”

“And the damned Army is afraid of its own shadow!” Admiral Zurahv snapped. “A few Chinese begin firing off rifles along the border and the Army shifts troops halfway across Russia to reinforce the border and transfers planes thousands of miles to stand by. In the name of Lenin, they ordered planes to the airfields along the damned border with China and there are no bombs at those airfields to arm the planes!” His big hand touched a stack of paper.

“I have an urgent request in this pile from the Army asking me to ship food from Vladivostok to the Army bases along the border because they don’t have enough food there to feed the troops they’re bringing in. I have never seen such a mess in my life. Let one Chinese peasant piss toward our border and the damned Army goes into a panic.”

“All very true, sir,” Captain Bogomolets said, “but the fact remains that if the Army is that shaky the last thing they would do is to follow orders from us, even from you, sir, to begin a nuclear attack against North America. They would go running to the Politburo to get endorsement of the order.”

“So we’ll get the order from the Politburo,” Zurahv growled. “I’ll take care of that. Captain Bogomolets, I want you to shift armed naval units to within close distance of each missile site. Find some excuse to do that, maneuvers or whatever. As soon as I have made my case to the Politburo that we must strike now I want to be sure that the orders will be followed. Your units will see to that.” He stood up.

“Dismissed,” he snapped. He remained standing until the last of his staff had left his office and sat down. He put the messages from the submarine commanders into a neat pile and then put them in a folder. His aide came in and stood at attention in front of his desk.

“By telephone, just now, sir,” the aide said. “An order from Comrade Plotovsky that you see him at once in his office. I am to call his office and assure him that you will do so, sir.”

“Tell him I’m on my way over,” Admiral Zurahv said. “I might as well take care of him, get him out of the way before I ask for an emergency meeting of the Politburo.”

“If I may suggest it, sir,” the aide said, “Comrade Plotovsky is not one to be taken lightly. He is very close to Comrade Brezhnev. He has a great name.”

Admiral Zurahv grinned, his tobacco-stained teeth showing, “But not close enough to the great man to convince him to vote when we asked for the weapons test, my young friend. I, too, have a great name. My father had a great name. The old man, Plotovsky, has grown very old, too old to make decisions in these times. It requires vigor and patriotism to make decisions today. By the way, did you send the memorial wreath to that grave as I ordered?”

“That was done, sir,” the aide intoned. “Without any name on the wreath, as you ordered.”

“As I told you,” the Admiral said. “I knew the young man’s father at one time. We were not friends. But that is no reason why the dead should not have a wreath on the grave. Call Comrade Plotovsky’s office and tell him I will be there within the next half hour.”

Moise Goldman walked into Admiral Brannon’s office and stuck out his hand. Brannon shook it warmly and waved Goldman to a chair in front of his desk. The former New York Times Managing Editor sat down in the chair and crossed his legs and combed his fingers through his black beard.

“What’s new, Admiral?” he asked. Brannon succinctly itemized the actions he had taken against the Soviet ballistic missile submarines. Goldman pulled a pipe out of his coat pocket and filled and lit it.

“Any indication of how the Soviets are reacting, sir?”

“They are advising their submarines that there is no change in the world political situation,” Brannon answered, “and that the Americans are undoubtedly crazy and that a protest would be filed, which means nothing.”

“It could mean that they’re stalling for time because the hardliners in the Politburo haven’t got their act together,” Goldman said. He relit his pipe. “I sure as hell don’t want our side to start dropping nuclear warheads on the Soviet Union. I’ve got grandparents in a little town just outside of Leningrad.”

“I don’t think anyone is going to drop anything,” Brannon said.

“I wish I were that sure,” Goldman replied. “I did two years as the Moscow Bureau Chief for the Times. The Russians don’t think like we do.”

“I didn’t know you had been in Moscow,” Brannon said. Goldman nodded, puffing hard at his pipe to keep it lit.

“Tough duty, to use your phraseology, Admiral. I speak the language and I can read and write it and that made it a little easier for me but it wasn’t a good two years. You earn your money.”

“Then let me ask you,” Brannon said cautiously, “do you think Brezhnev will call the President?”

“No,” Goldman said shortly. “He’d lose a lot of face. He’s a Ukrainian and they’re proud people. He’s a proud man.” He drew on his pipe. “On the other hand he’s a hell of a politician; you don’t come as far as he’s come, hold the jobs he’s held without being one of the world’s better wheelers and dealers. If he can’t see any profit in being stiff-necked he might make that call. As I said, the Russians don’t think like we do. You can’t figure them out, not even one Russian can figure out another Russian. But every day that goes by means something.”

“What?” Brannon asked.

Goldman grinned around his pipe stem. “What do you think it means?”

“I have to think that each day they don’t do something means that we’re getting closer and closer to standoff and that Brezhnev will make the call.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Goldman said. He took a pocketknife out of his pocket and opened the blade and cleaned out his pipe in an ashtray on Brannon’s desk.

“State Department intelligence says they have word that there’s a showdown coming in the Politburo. They don’t know what’s responsible for the showdown and they’re making a lot of silly-assed guesses about grain production and the shortage of meat in the countryside. I think the showdown is between the hard and softliners in the Politburo.” He uncrossed his legs and sat up a little straighter in his chair.

“Give me your military estimate of what would happen if a nuclear war starts, Admiral.”

Brannon rubbed his face with one hand. “It’s pretty well known, Moise. If they launch first we’d knock down some of their missiles but enough would get through to wipe out about ninety percent of our land-based missiles. And most of our cities.

“How about our air strike capability?”

“Overrated, in my opinion. They could get most of the planes before they got to their target area.” He reached for the coffee carafe and poured two cups of coffee.

“If they launch first they’d put a big percentage of their civilian population in their air raid shelters. Russia has a first rate civil defense system. All of their important people would be deep underground where we couldn’t touch them with nuclear missiles. But there is one factor they can’t get around.”

“Such as?”

“If they launch first we wouldn’t respond with submarine missiles immediately, Moise. The submarine skippers would get the word that they’d launched. They’d then move into launch position, those that weren’t already there, and wait for three weeks. The psychologists have told us that two weeks is about the absolute limit you can keep people in deep shelters before psychological disturbances begin to take place. We’d wait out that period and then wait another week and then we’d launch from the submarines.” His normally cheerful face was somber.

“Our estimates show that we’d eliminate the Soviet Union as a nation.”

“Cheerful thought,” Goldman said. “Now I’ve got a cheerful thought for you, Admiral. I think we’d better go in and talk to the President, tell him everything.”

“That wasn’t what we had decided on,” Brannon said.

“I know that,” Goldman said. “But there’s another factor in the equation. Your friend Captain Steel has gone to Representative Wendell. The word I get is that Captain Steel wants your ass in a basket and he’s using Wendell to satisfy that want.

“Now old Wendell is a pretty cute operator but he can’t do what Steel wants unless he lets a few facts out that aren’t supposed to be let out. And that means that those things will get back to the President. And if that happens then your ass isn’t going to be in a basket, it’s going to be hanging from a yardarm, if they still have yardarms in the Navy. So I think it’s time that the two of us go to the Old Man and tell him what’s gone on.”

“I’ve trusted you, Moise,” Brannon said slowly. “I hoped that you would trust me, let me work this thing out. And I think it will work out.”

“I trust you,” Goldman said. “But I know a little more about how politics is played than you do, I think, and I’ve got a feeling in my tokus that if you don’t sit down and tell the President everything you’re going to find yourself in a pissing contest with a skunk — and my daddy used to warn me never to get into that sort of a contest.”

“When?” Brannon asked.

Goldman looked at his wrist watch. ‘‘He’s waiting for you now, Admiral. I’ve got a car and driver out back, near the service entry.”

Brannon rose and went to the coat tree and got his uniform overcoat and hat.

“What’s your reading on how he’ll respond?”

“Politically,” Goldman said. “He’s a political creature. Just let me do the preliminary talking, set it up. Then you speak your piece, tell him everything that’s happened. Don’t give him reasons why you didn’t tell him or the Joint Chiefs about the sinking of the Sharkfin. Then I’ll jump in and give him my opinion of where he stands politically.”

“And then?” Brannon asked as he buttoned his coat.

“Then he’ll ask you why you didn’t tell him as soon as the Sharkfin was attacked and sunk and you’re on your own, Admiral.” He held the office door open, a grin on his face.

The office of Leonid I. Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, reflected the life style the burly Communist leader preferred. The desk he sat behind was made of solid walnut. Its vast surface shone with a deep gleam that spoke of hours of patient hand rubbing and polishing. Thick rugs covered the floor and large, comfortable sofas were arranged along two walls of the spacious office. Small tables inlaid in intricate patterns of rare woods stood in front of the sofas. In front of the desk there were three chairs upholstered in a pale gold leather that complemented the muted colors of the fabric-covered walls.

The chair in back of the desk was a present from an American ambassador, a “senator’s chair,” large, comfortable, with a high back. The chair was covered in a black leather that had been carefully selected to be blemish-free. The First Secretary took pleasure in pointing out to visitors the perfection of the leather upholstery, explaining that the Americans took the precaution of raising animals for such purpose, keeping the cows in enclosures that contained no barbed wire or sharp corners that might possibly cause a scar in the animal’s hide.

Igor Shevenko walked into the First Secretary’s anteroom in response to the summons he had received a half hour previously. An aide to Brezhnev rose from behind his desk, looking at his wrist watch.

“You are ten minutes early, Comrade Shevenko.”

“A bad habit of mine,” Shevenko said. “My father taught me to always be ahead of an appointment. That way I would never be late.” He grinned at the aide who looked again at his watch and sat down. The aide turned suddenly, his face stricken, as the door behind his desk opened and two men came into the anteroom. Shevenko recognized them at once. Lieutenant General Mishikoff, head of the GRU, the Glavnoye Rezvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, the Army Intelligence Service, and his aide, Brigadier General Koslin. The two Army officers, the silver stars on their gold shoulder boards glittering in the harsh fluorescent lights, nodded solemnly at Shevenko as they walked past him and out of the anteroom.

“I should have been on time,” Shevenko said to the aide in a soft voice.

“It would have been better,” the aide replied. He picked up the phone and spoke briefly and then rose. “The Secretary will see you now, Comrade Shevenko.” He turned and opened the door for Shevenko who walked into the inner office and stood waiting, watching Brezhnev as he read a report on his desk. The sharp eyes beneath the massive eyebrows raised suddenly and Brezhnev nodded and indicated that Shevenko should take a chair in front of the desk.

“Thank you for coming, Igor,” Brezhnev said. “You are well, I hope?”

“Yes, thank you, sir. And you?”

“Oh, those damned doctors keep telling me I should stop smoking but they give me nothing to take the place of tobacco.” He shook a cigarette out of a package and lit it. He inhaled deeply and put the cigarette in an ashtray and touched the papers on his desk.

“This report from the GRU, it’s contradictory to the report you sent me this morning. I wonder who is right, the KGB or the GRU?”

“What did General Mishikoff say, if I may ask, Comrade Secretary?”

“He says the United States is about to launch a nuclear missile attack against us from land, sea, and air. You said in your report that this was a possibility, it has always been a possibility so there was nothing new in that, but you did not indicate that such an attack was imminent. You’d better explain your reasoning a little better, Comrade Shevenko.” The First Secretary leaned back in his high-backed chair and the cold eyes stared at Shevenko.

“My report reviewed what I see as a crisis, sir. It is my firm conviction that it is a grave crisis. My agents in Washington and information from other sources tell me that one or two admirals in Washington have begun a course of retaliation to our test of the new torpedo against one of their submarines.

“I am informed that President Milligan does not know that he has lost a submarine, that he does not know that the retaliation has taken place. The last piece of information I received before coming over, sir, was that each of the ten missile submarines we have on patrol in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are now being hounded by at least two American attack submarines. I am not a naval expert, but I have made inquiries and am told that no missile submarine being hounded in this manner can hope to fire more than one missile before being sunk.” Shevenko settled a little deeper into the comfortable leather chair.

“Our sources indicate that the American admirals are acting completely on their own. My analysis of this would be that they are hardliners who are dissatisfied with the course of detente that now exists between the Soviet Union and the United States.” He paused, searching for the right words.

“If I may say it this way, sir, the Americans see our weapons test as a grave provocation, literally an act of war. They retaliated in the same manner.”

“And?” Brezhnev said.

“They are now waiting for what they see as a reasonable reaction from us.”

“Which is?”

“With all due respect, sir, I am advised that the American admirals expect you to call President Milligan and explain to him that a terrible mistake has happened, that it won’t happen again, that the submarine crew that committed the mistake is being punished.” He sat up straighter, waiting for the reaction.

“I apologize to no one!” Brezhnev snapped.

“If you will allow me to continue to take the part of the devil’s advocate, Comrade, the American admirals who have acted in this insane manner would not see your call as an apology. President Milligan would know only what you had told him, what his renegade admirals tell him; that one of our submarine commanders went crazy, that it would not happen again.”

“What advantage could they get?” Brezhnev asked.

“Possibly a withdrawal from the state of detente,” Shevenko answered. “I think that would satisfy them. If the President took a hard line the American military would be in a position to demand more spending for weapons.”

Brezhnev rocked forward in his chair. “If I do as you say they want me to do it would solve nothing. The faction within the Politburo that wants to smash North America and Mainland China now, at once, would still be there. The American admirals who have created this impasse would still be there. There is no political gain for either side.” He stopped and lit another cigarette.

“I inherited a dissident Politburo from Nikita. You know that as well as I do. The feeling was, still is, that Khrushchev went too far toward the West, that he undermined our struggle for world leadership.” He drew on his cigarette and sent a plume of smoke toward the ceiling.

“I saved Nikita from liquidation, did you know that?”

“Yes, sir. I knew that.”

“Now I must save the Soviet Union from nuclear attack.”

“You are the First Secretary, sir,” Shevenko said.

“Who is at the mercy of the Politburo if it turns against me,” Brezhnev snapped. “Admiral Zurahv, General Mishikoff, are both advocating an immediate nuclear strike against the United States and Mainland China. They have called for an emergency meeting of the Politburo at four tomorrow afternoon. Comrade Plotovsky has told me that he has asked you to be there as a witness for his side.”

“Yes, sir, he has asked me to do that.”

“What do you hope to gain?”

“With all due respect, sir, at best a majority vote to discontinue the weapons testing program. At worst, a defeat by no more than one vote with the hope, my and Comrade Plotovsky’s hope, sir, that you will cast a vote on Comrade Plotovsky’s side and create a tie and table the matter.”

“That’s Plotovsky’s thinking,” Brezhnev said. “He’s a rare bird, that old man. A street fighter who turned into a politician and forgot nothing of his street fighting tricks.” He stubbed out his cigarette in a glass ashtray and reached for the cigarette package.

“And if Plotovsky’s side, your side, wins how do we go about cleaning up this mess? Have you thought about that? I am not going to apologize, Igor!”

“There is a way,” Shevenko said slowly. “I could reach the head of the CIA through Israel, let him know the crisis is over. He could go to the President, tell him what happened and assure him that everything is normal. If it can be done that way the American admirals who are playing president would be forced out of the Navy.”

“They’ve lost one of their submarines,” Brezhnev said.

“The loss has not been announced, sir. It could be laid to unknown causes. The history of the sea is full of such incidents, sir. Just as we would, in due time, announce the loss of our submarine to the same cause.”

“It always comes down to politics,” Brezhnev said. “And politics are the same all over the world. Only the penalty for failure differs.” He leaned back in the big chair, the eyes under the bristling eyebrows steady on Shevenko.

“I knew your father, as you know, Igor. We were great friends. His death in the great patriotic war was a blow to me, almost as much a blow as it was to you and your family. For his sake I hope you are well prepared for the meeting.”

“My father used to talk a lot about you, sir,” Shevenko said. “He said you were a man who never forgot a friend. I will do my best.”

“That’s a nice thing to have said about yourself,” Brezhnev said. He got out of his chair and walked around the desk and put his heavy hand on Shevenko’s shoulder.

“I’m afraid that in those days friendship was based on trust. Those were the days when we were fighting a common enemy and there was no room for politics.”

Admiral Zurahv paced the floor of his office. His chief naval aide, Captain Bogomolets, watched him from a chair as he sipped at a mug of hot tea.

“The old man, Plotovsky, saw the First Secretary this morning, early. Then Brezhnev called for the two generals, Mishikoff and Koslin.”

“Understandable,” the Captain said. “Brezhnev is a cautious man, a politician. He would listen to one side and then the other. The full Politburo will be at the meeting. If we don’t win, if we get a tie vote, then it is up to Brezhnev to break the tie with his vote.”

“If he chooses to vote. He didn’t, the other time.”

“He can’t ride that horse a second time,” Captain Bogomolets said patiently. “We’ve talked about that earlier. He will have to vote. The fact that he called in Plotovsky and then the GRU is an indication that he may believe that the vote will be a tie.”

The Admiral stopped pacing and faced his aide. “Mishikoff reported to me that when he and Koslin left the First Secretary’s office Igor Shevenko was sitting in the anteroom. I don’t like the sound of that, my friend.”

“The foolishness with that boy,” Captain Bogomolets said softly. “Shevenko’s aide. A pity.”

“Shevenko had him murdered!” Admiral Zurahv snapped. “And don’t call it foolishness, you had the same appetites years ago.”

“Admitted,” the naval Captain said.

“So what do you think Shevenko told Brezhnev, that I was a sodomist and therefore couldn’t be trusted?”

“The conversation between them, as I am told by Brezhnev’s aide, did not cover that subject, my friend. In fact, Brezhnev did not give Shevenko any encouragement in his role as a witness tomorrow. Rather, he warned him to do well.”

“How reliable is that damned aide?” Zurahv growled.

“Reliable enough,” Captain Bogomolets said. “What we have to do now is to figure some way to impress on the opposition that it is imperative that we move in our direction and at once.

Admiral Zurahv lowered his massive hams onto the edge of his desk and rubbed his belly. “Yes. Here’s how we will do it. We will watch closely during the meeting. If we see signs of doubt in those we think we are sure of, there’s at least one who could play the role of turncoat. We’ll play our trump card, we’ll say we have absolute information that the United States and Peking have decided to launch a simultaneous nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.”

“Not a very strong trump card,” Bogomolets said. “Proof will be demanded.”

“The GRU will manufacture that proof,” Admiral Zurahv said. “We’ll only use it if we have to, if Plotovsky has succeeded in turning old Arekelyan to his side. I don’t think Brezhnev will dare to vote with Plotovsky if we raise the issue of national security.” The Navy Captain shook his grizzled head.

“I still think it’s a chancy thing.”

Admiral Zurahv shrugged. “Here is what I want you to do. Get off messages to all our missile submarines now at sea. Tell them to take stations and revise targets for missiles to hit at all hard-based missile sites in the United States.” He paused and shifted his position a bit to better accommodate his bulk.

“In the same message tell them to stand by for a firing order. Send the messages in Code Zebra Seven. We have no evidence that the Americans have cracked that code.”

Captain Bogomolets stood up and smoothed his uniform tunic. “You intend to begin the attack no matter what the results of the meeting?”

“I intend to save my country from nuclear death,” Admiral Zurahv said.