Torpedo!

CHAPTER 2

The icy air of Moscow’s December seeped in around the window frames of the gray stone building at Two Dzerzhinsky Square. In a third-floor office the shabby green walls, spotted here and there with faded beige patches where the scabrous paint had flaked off, gave off a cold, clammy smell. Igor Shevenko, the head of the First Directorate of the KGB, the division responsible for clandestine intelligence operations outside of the Soviet Union, opened a fresh pack of Kool cigarettes and lit one with a Zippo lighter. He unfolded a copy of the New York Times and turned to the sports section, looking for the scores of the previous day’s professional football games. He smiled as he read a story about the New York Jets; Joe Namath had thrown four touchdown passes and if the Jets won one more game they were a cinch for the Super Bowl. He looked up as his aide came in with a tray holding two steaming mugs of coffee and a plate of French pastry.

“Can’t you get those lazy bastards in the basement to send up some heat?” Shevenko growled. “These radiators have about as much warmth in them as my wife. By the Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B., if I don’t get some heat up here I’m going to send everyone in that basement to Siberia.”

“Beastly what of what or whom, sir?” Stefan Lubutkin’s thin face was a study in confusion.

“You’ve never read J. P. Donleavy? You’re not properly educated, Stefan. Marvelous writer, Donleavy. A New York Irishman. He reminds me of the way I used to write when I was taking my doctorate at Columbia in New York. Now what in the hell do we have to do to get some heat up here?”

“The approved method, Comrade Director, is to write a letter in triplicate and send it by post to the proper bureau. The way the mails are these days that could take from four days to two weeks.

“The bureau that receives the letter will then call a meeting to decide if they are indeed the proper people to consider your request. If they are, they will then schedule another meeting to take up the request. The odds are that they will then write a letter to us, in triplicate, advising us to form a committee and study the problem and keep them advised. By that time, Comrade Director, it will be summer and the problem will be solved.”

“One of these days your sense of humor is going to cost you your balls,” Shevenko growled. “I don’t want to write letters or form committees. I want heat.”

“It is taken care of, sir. I gave the chief engineer a bottle of your American vodka. He prefers it to our own brands, says it has more bite.” As he placed the tray on Shevenko’s desk the radiators began to clank and hiss.

“About time,” Shevenko grumbled. “Now what about that stupidity in London? What’s been done about that idiot who used a truck to mash our would-be embassy defector into strawberry jam against some brick wall or other?”

Lubutkin pulled a chair across the worn carpet and placed it in front of the desk. “Not just some brick wall, sir, it was a wall around a formal garden. A nice poetic touch, I’d say. The idiot you referred to worked, as you know, as a gardener on the palace grounds.”

“Poetic touch your ass,” Shevenko said. “It was a mistake to liquidate the defector in that way, in front of witnesses. The idiot was lucky to get away without being arrested. The defector should have been brought back here where we could have emptied him like a garbage pail. What did that fool who drove the truck expect, a medal, a promotion to the Wet Squad?”

“I don’t know, sir. Perhaps he will get his reward in Heaven, as they say in the West.”

Shevenko cupped his hands around the mug of coffee, relishing the warmth. “Was it done in such a way that the London police will think it was an accident?”

“The subject in question was a heroin addict, sir. I arranged that he get some pure heroin. He died of an overdose. His body wasn’t used to the pure drug.”

“Pure heroin?” Shevenko’s voice rose almost a half octave from its normal deep bass. “You ordered money spent for pure heroin? You’re dumber than you look, Lubutkin. Your father must have mated with a jackass. Or would it be a jenny? No matter. Why didn’t you have him run over by a car or mugged and dropped off a bridge into the Thames?”

“We gain twice, sir. We are rid of an agent who was no longer useful. The stories of his death, he was a British subject as you know, will underline the decadence of a society that uses drugs.” He looked meaningfully at the plate of pastry. Shevenko nodded his head and Lubutkin reached for the plate.

“I wish you’d stop playing the international spy, Stefan. You’re not cut out for it. Your genes aren’t right. Keep things simple. It’s bad enough when our friends on the other side play spy games and get things so messed up we can’t do our work. Keep it simple and keep it cheap. I have enough trouble now with the people who dole out the money.” The clear blue eyes focused on Lubutkin.

“Now the other matter, Stefan. The one that none of us could keep simple?”

“The submarine captain reported that he carried out his orders. He sent the co-ordinates of the area on the ocean bottom where his target is resting. The water there is very deep, thirteen thousand feet, Comrade.”

Shevenko bit into a Napoleon and wiped the creamy filling from his lips with a Kleenex he took from a box that stood on his desk. “The submarine captain is on his way here?”

“Yes, sir. All that information is in the morning folder that I brought in with the newspaper, sir.” His voice held the faintest tinge of reproach that his chief had chosen to read the New York Times before he looked in the folder Lubutkin prepared for him each morning.

“Our leaders have done some stupid things in the past,” Shevenko growled, “but this is one of the more stupid. Those damned admirals get their hands on a new weapon and they can’t rest until they’re tried it out under what they like to call combat conditions. Never forget one thing, little Stefan; if you give a man a target pistol as a gift he won’t rest until he has found a target to fire at. Testing weapons makes noise and noise disturbs the status quo.”

“A target that is now deep under the sea isn’t likely to make much noise, sir,” Lubutkin smiled slyly.

“Don’t underestimate the Americans. That windbag they call a Secretary of State could probably fill his lungs and dive to the deepest part of the ocean and find their missing submarine. Now take this down.

“I want you to schedule a meeting for tomorrow afternoon, as soon as possible after the arrival of the submarine captain. I want the meeting to be held here and I want the submarine captain and Admiral Zurahv and his aides to be there, also old Plotovsky. He may be getting a little senile but he’s still a power in the Politburo and he was against this operation from the start. If you have any trouble getting him let me know and I’ll take care of it. I want him there to maybe throw a little scare into the admirals.

“I want that woman we have, the expert in American affairs, the one with the big bosoms. Tell her I want her there as an observer. Looking at her might make the meeting bearable.”

“I agree, sir, the lady is handsome.” At Shevenko’s nod he placed a Napoleon on a square of Kleenex and carried it into his office. Shevenko broke the seal on the folder with a thick thumb and let its contents spill out on his desk.

“That Joe Namath,” he muttered as he pushed the New York Times to one side. “He lives as we would all like to live. Do your job spectacularly and romp with beautiful women in your off time. Which reminds me.” He punched a button on his desk and Lubutkin’s head appeared around the edge of the doorway between their offices.

“Send a message to Fidel. I want two tickets for the Super Bowl game, good seats, as soon as they are available. I want transport from Havana to Miami and I don’t want to come ashore through a mangrove swamp in the Florida Keys. Tell him to route me through Mexico City to Miami and return the same route. I want a good hotel on Miami Beach, a suite, for three nights.”

“Isn’t it a little soon, sir? If I remember, that game is played late in January.”

“I know when it’s played. Fidel is like all our sacred Cuban brothers, he’s completely disorganized.” Lubutkin nodded. Shevenko began to read the report from the submarine captain who had torpedoed and sunk the U.S.S. Sharkfin.

Vice Admiral Michael P. Brannon, Commander, Submarines Atlantic, turned at the door of his quarters and used his bulk to shield his wife from the wind.

“You’d better get inside, Gloria, this wind is cold. I’ll try to be home by eighteen hundred. If I’m going to be late I’ll phone.” He bent and kissed her upturned mouth and went down the steps to the sidewalk, carrying his heavy frame with an erectness that belied his age and the crushing weight of responsibility that went with his job. His driver smiled a greeting as he held open the car door. The driver trotted around the car and settled himself behind the wheel and the car moved off, the blue pennant with three white stars on it that flew from a front fender snapping in the cold morning wind.

The outer, or E-Ring of the four-story Pentagon building is the area where the offices of the nation’s defense chiefs and planners are located. The offices are large and comfortably furnished. Depending where in the E-Ring an office might be located, a sweeping view of some of the nation’s history is visible; the dome of the nation’s Capitol, old Georgetown, the Lincoln Memorial or, in summer, the lush greenery along the historic Potomac River.

The office suite occupied by Vice Admiral Brannon was luxuriously furnished in keeping with his rank and his position as ComSubLant. The General Services Administration saw to it there were comfortable sofas, chairs, coffee tables, and a massive walnut desk with a high backed swivel chair for the Admiral. Within arm’s reach of the swivel chair there was a taboret with a carafe of ice water and glasses. The walls were decorated with a large picture of the President of the United States and framed color photos of the submarines, the submarine squadrons, the heavy cruiser, and the battleship Mike Brannon had commanded during his long naval career. A corps of yeomen worked in the three outer offices of the suite under the supervision of a dour Chief Yeoman who wore seven gold hash marks on the left sleeve of his uniform jacket denoting twenty-eight years of honorable service.

Admiral Brannon paused at the Chief Yeoman’s desk in the outer office. “Good morning, Chief. Any word on the Sharkfin come in overnight?”

“Negative, sir. Admiral Olsen is waiting for you in your office. Coffee will be ready in a minute, Admiral.”

“Thank you. You’d better get a sweet roll for Admiral Olsen. He’s always hungry and nothing he eats puts an ounce on him.” Brannon went into his office as Rear Admiral John Olsen turned away from the office window.

“Good to see you, John. The Chief said there was nothing on Sharkfin. That right?”

“No word, Mike. As of zero eight hundred today, in a few minutes, she’ll be sixty-eight hours overdue with her position report. Aircraft search out of Spain and the Azores is negative. We’re calling her on all bands every five minutes, alternating from Rota and Washington. No answer.”

“She could have a breakdown in her communications gear,” Brannon said. There was a light tap on the door and a yeoman came in with a tray holding a carafe of coffee, cups, a can of condensed milk, sugar, and a huge sweet roll. He put the tray down on a coffee table and closed the door quietly behind him as he left the room. Brannon carefully measured half a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee and then poured in evaporated milk until the liquid was a creamy yellow. Olsen bit into the sweet roll and chewed rapidly.

“She’s got too much redundancy in communications for a breakdown to be the cause of not reporting,” Olsen said. “The only thing I can think of is a major breakdown in her nuclear power plant and that she might be somewhere on the bottom, trying to make repairs.”

“That won’t wash,” Brannon said. “Water’s too deep for her to be on the bottom. Way too deep.”

The two men, shipmates during World War II when Mike Brannon had commanded the U.S.S. Eelfish and John Olsen had been his Executive Officer during six harrowing submarine war patrols, looked at each other, each sensing the other’s concern.

“Let’s go down to the Black Room,” Brannon said. He turned and stretched, reaching for the console of buttons on his desk top.

“You don’t have to call them,” Olsen said. “I did that a little while ago. I asked Captain Steel to meet us there.”

Brannon frowned. “You think that was necessary at this point?”

“He’s an important man in the Navy, and still very powerful, Mike. He may not be able to contribute very much at this stage but if he isn’t kept informed he’ll raise so much hell that life won’t be worth living.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Brannon said. He drained his coffee cup and stood up, his mind on the abrasive Captain Herman Steel. “I just don’t much like that man, John.”

“Who does?” Olsen said as he unfolded his long, lean length from a sofa. “He doesn’t even have a wife or kids to like him. He’s just a mean, nasty, son of a bitch but he’s our son of a bitch and God help us.”

The Black Room in Operations was well named. Three of the four walls were made of thick glass. There were no lights in the room except for one red light on a desk in the center of the room and a glowing ruby tip on the end of a microphone that sprouted out of the desk top on a long flexible stalk.

“You took your time getting here.” The rasping voice of Captain Herman Steel was loud in the quiet dimness of the room. “I’ve got better things to do than to stand around and wait for people who can’t begin their day’s work until they’ve poisoned their systems with coffee. Caffeine is a drug. It dulls the brain. I see evidence of that every day when I have to deal with coffee-swilling, seagoing types.”

“Good morning, Captain.” Mike Brannon’s voice gave no evidence that he was aware of the rudeness of Captain Steel’s remarks. “I thank you for coming down here on such short notice. I know you have a busy schedule.” As his eyes adjusted to the room’s gloom Brannon saw that Captain Steel was watching Brannon closely.

Commander John Fencer, the officer in charge of the Black Room, moved out of the gloom to the desk. The red light illuminated his square, compact form and made deep shadows under his eyebrows. As he turned to face the three men the red light cast an eerie sheen on his close-cropped blond hair. He touched a finger to a button on the desk top.

“Standing by, sir.” The voice came from a speaker built into the desk.

“Please display the western half of the Mediterranean, the Strait of Gibraltar and the eastern half of the Atlantic,” Fencer said crisply. He turned with the others to face a glass wall that began to glow faintly and then lit up with a detailed nautical chart of the requested areas.

“Please chart the course of the U.S.S. Sharkfin up to and through the Strait and beyond and lay down her designated course after her last position report.” A black line appeared in the Mediterranean and moved through the Strait of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic, veering slightly to the north as the line moved out to the edge of the chart.

“Thank you,” Fencer said. “Now indicate the points where Sharkfin made her known position reports.”

A black X showed on the chart in the Mediterranean and another black X appeared on the chart on the course line to the west of the Strait. Fencer looked at a paper he held in his hand, tilting it to catch the dim light.

“Assume speed to be twenty knots made good over the ground. Indicate where on the course line Sharkfin would have made her next position report.” A black O showed on the course line. The desk speaker rattled.

“Sharkfin’s last position report was made just before she crossed the outboard edge of the SOSUS network, sir.”

“What other information do you have from SOSUS, Commander?” Brannon turned to Captain Steel. “SOSUS is our network of ocean bottom sensors, Captain.”

“I’m aware of that,” Steel snapped. Brannon shrugged and turned to watch as a red line appeared on the chart just south of the Strait of Gibraltar. The red line moved northward and then joined the black course line of the Sharkfin. The red line followed along the black line and then stopped. It reappeared, moving on a reverse course and veering to the southeast, away from the black line. The red line continued in that direction until it neared the west coast of Morocco, where it formed an elliptical loop.

“The red line is the track of a submarine, not one of ours,” Fencer said. “The break in the red line is where the other submarine passed out of the SOSUS area. It then returned and proceeded to the area where it has been on patrol. That area is shown as the elliptical loop on the chart, Admiral.”

“Do you have an ID on that other submarine?” Brannon asked.

“Yes, sir. We have a positive footprint confirmed by visual observations off Algeria, in the Med. She’s a late model Soviet nuclear attack submarine. I must point out, Admiral, that Soviet submarines often follow our submarines and surface ships. Our submarines follow their ships. It’s a rather common practice, sir.”

“But they don’t usually follow one of our ships that far, isn’t that so?”

“Yes, sir,” Fencher answered.

“Thank you, Commander. Please give my thanks to your staff.” Brannon turned to Captain Steel. “I’d like to see you in my office, sir, if you have time?”

“I don’t have time,” Steel snapped. “A congressional committee takes precedence over a vice admiral, I believe. I have to testify this morning. I can give you forty-five minutes this afternoon. At fourteen hundred. In my office.” He turned and left the Black Room, his steel-shod heels ringing on the tiled floor.

Brannon’s Chief Yeoman brought fresh coffee into his office. He put a list of telephone calls to be answered on the desk and left.

“Care to drug your system with a little poison?” Olsen asked as he poured the coffee. “The arrogance of that man! You’d think he flew three stars and that you were a snot-nosed ensign! I don’t know why you don’t lower the boom of rank on that man, Mike, I really don’t.”

“Don’t let it bother you, John,” Brannon answered. He stirred his coffee slowly. “I don’t let it bother me and I’ve been exposed to him for three years. You’ve only had that pleasure for the last six months.

“The Chief of Naval Operations gave me two major priorities when he assigned me to this job three years ago. One was to carry out the responsibilities of the office and God knows, that’s a heavy load. The other was to try, as subtly as I could, to restore the morale the submarine Navy has lost over the years and to increase the re-enlistment rate in nuclear submarines. The re-up rate had fallen to an all time low and cash bonuses for re-upping weren’t doing the job.

“To carry out that second priority I had to begin countermanding a lot of the directives that Captain Steel had put out. The sort of directives that coddled the graduates of the nuclear power training schools he had set up. I had to do that in such a manner that Captain Steel didn’t get his ass in an uproar and go running to the Congress to demand my head on a platter alongside the head of the Chief of Naval Operations.

“What did they teach us in War College? Know your enemy. Study your enemy. Understand him. I did that. I wound up not liking the man any more than I had but I did gain a lot of respect for him. He took an awful hazing at the Academy because of, well, call it ethnic bigotry. That same bigotry that Rickover had to deal with as a Jew. It gave the two men a common ground. That’s how they were able to work so closely together.

“Rickover had only one weapon he could use against the bigotry — his brain. He used it. He took the reality of the atomic bomb and the concept of nuclear power from that bomb and he literally created the nuclear submarine Navy all by himself and Steel has done nearly as much bringing the Navy up to date.”

“Don’t forget how he did that,” Olsen said dryly. “He sucked up a lot of powerful members of the Congress and when he had them in his hip pocket he sucked up to presidents, their White House staffs and to the press. He became a little tin god, untouchable.

“Once the nuclear submarine Navy was underway he coddled, that’s your word and it’s a good one, he coddled the nuclear school graduates until damned good submariners who hadn’t qualified to go through his schools got so fed up they either didn’t re-enlist or if they had a lot of time to serve they tried their damndest to get off the nukes. I know of cases where some of them offered as much as a thousand bucks to get a swap. I had to live with that in my command in Pearl Harbor and it almost drove me crazy.”

“I know,” Brannon said. “It’s taken me the better part of two years to get rid of the worst of the petty stuff. There’s still a hell of a lot to be done, a hell of a lot and it’s got to be done carefully and slowly.” He looked at Olsen, his dark blue eyes boring into the other man.

“Why do you think I asked for you as my Number One when Roger retired? I want someone I can trust to carry on the work. Someone who can make this nuclear submarine Navy into the same sort of submarine Navy we had in World War II and after the war. An outfit that good men will try their damndest to get into and will never want to leave. Captain Steel has been passed over for admiral but I know that he’s got a scheme going that’s going to override the Navy’s rules and give him his big star. I’ve only got another year and a bit in this job and then they’ll pipe me over the side. They don’t let you stay past the age of sixty-two. Unless you’re Captain Steel, of course.”

“He must hate you with a passion,” Olsen said slowly. “And he’ll hate me just as much. Fine shipmate you are, Mike, letting me in for this.”

‘I don’t think he hates anyone,” Mike Brannon said. “He’s too intelligent to waste emotion on hatred. I think he sees me as a problem he has to solve with his intellect.”

“Oh, sure,” Olsen said. He refilled the coffee cups from the carafe. “I can name two or three admirals he got rid of. Damned good men who didn’t want to go, either. But he got nasty about them and they went.”

“That was early, when he was starting to build his power base,” Brannon said. “He had to show his power so he could do the things that he wanted to do. He’s too good a politician now to try that sort of thing.” He pushed a button on his desk and his Chief Yeoman came in, a stenographic pad and pen in hand.

“Would you call the director of the CIA and ask him to sit in with me in a meeting in Captain Steel’s office at fourteen hundred today? Tell him I apologize for the short notice but I consider the meeting important.”

“Talk about politicians,” Olsen said, “Didn’t Steel try to torpedo Admiral Benson when the President proposed him as head of the CIA?”

Brannon nodded. “That’s one of the very few times Mr. Steel ever ran up on a reef. Johnny Benson had a hell of a record as a pilot and as a carrier skipper and when he made admiral he showed his colors as an administrator.

“I wasn’t playing politics asking him to sit in on the meeting. I’m worried about something else, John.” He rose and walked over to the window and stood looking down at the tree tops whipping in the wind.

“We’ve never had a nuclear power plant failure in a submarine that I know of. We’ve got our hands full in Vietnam right now and what I’m damned afraid of, old friend, is that the Russians have decided to take advantage of our problems in Vietnam and restart the Cold War. Only this time the theatre isn’t Europe, it’s our area, the deep sea.”