Torpedo!

CHAPTER 8

Admiral Brannon stopped at the desk of his Chief Yeoman and took off his muffler and his heavy uniform overcoat. The Chief looked at his desk notepad.

“You’ve got a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at lunch, sir. One call this morning from the Sub Base at New London. They want to know when Sharkfin will arrive. I told them you’d get back to them sometime today. Admiral Olsen is in your office, sir.” Brannon nodded his thanks and went in to his office.

“Morning, John,” he said to Olsen. “You get any information on that Soviet freighter from Lloyds?”

“Her original port of call was Odessa with tobacco and citrus fruits from Libya, Mike. Her skipper notified Lloyds that his owners had diverted him to France, to Brest.”

“Doesn’t figure,” Brannon said. “He could have gone across the Mediterranean and offloaded in Marseilles. Saved a lot of sea time and fuel. Fencer said that freighter had worked with Soviet subs off the Aleutians, that’s where they got her footprint. He said the freighter was working Soviet submarines with sonar. My guess is that the Russians have sent her down Sharkfin’s course to find out if the Medusa put down sonar buoys around the Sharkfin.”

“Might be that they didn’t believe what Wilson told to his contact in Israel,” Olsen said slowly. “They want to run a check for themselves.” He looked at Brannon.

“The deadline for that phone call from Brezhnev is tonight, Mike.”

The red light on Bob Wilson’s scrambler telephone flashed and then began to blink. Wilson picked up the telephone handset and heard Isser Bernstein’s voice.

“I don’t have good news, Bob,” Bernstein said. “We have learned that the person who is supposed to make that telephone call has been sick in bed for the past week. He has a bad case of Asian Flu.” Bernstein chuckled. “I think that’s a sort of poetic justice, Asian Flu. He has seen no one but his doctors, taken no phone calls since he got sick.”

“You’re sure?” Wilson asked.

“He has been under the care of the best chest man in his country. The doctor is of my faith and is an old friend of mine. I am sure. What I think you should do, old friend, is to put everything on the back burner, as you people say. Delay events as long as you can.”

“I agree,” Wilson said. “Shalom. “He put the handset back on its cradle and sat staring at the wall of his office, debating in his mind if he should tell Admiral Benson what Bernstein had told him or to let events take their course.

A few minutes after Wilson had talked with Isser Bernstein, Stefan Lubutkin stuck his head around the door into Shevenko’s office. “If there is nothing more, Comrade Director?”

“No, nothing. It’s the ballet tonight, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. And thank you. Until tomorrow, Comrade Director.”

“Have you got a pretty girl to take to the ballet, Stefan?” Shevenko called out. “I understand that girls are quicker to yield after they have watched the male ballet dancers perform.” Lubutkin blushed and withdrew his head.

Later that evening, during the second act of the ballet, Lubutkin left his seat and went through a heavily brocaded curtain that concealed an exit door. He slipped through the door and stood in the dark alleyway outside the theatre. He saw the black limousine and walked to it and opened the door and got into the back seat. Admiral Zurahv smiled at him.

“Your boss lied to us, Stefan,” the Admiral said. “The Americans did not find their submarine. If they had done so they would have marked the spot with sonar buoys. There are no such buoys.”

“The picture?” Lubutkin said. “It looked genuine.”

“It did,” the Admiral said. “But it could have been faked. I am having it analyzed now by one of our photo experts.”

“He lies to everyone,” Lubutkin said. “And he lies about everyone. He lied to me. He told me he went to East Berlin and that is where he got the picture and the information. Our man in East Berlin never saw him.”

“He did leave Moscow,” Zurahv said. “One of my people saw him board the airliner, saw him return. Where did he go?”

“I think to West Berlin,” Lubutkin said. “I think he went there to see a woman. He is a notorious one for women.”

“A woman?” Admiral Zurahv said genially. “He doesn’t know what a treasure he has in his own office. You’ll stop by my apartment after the ballet, little one?”

“Now, if you like, darling,” Lubutkin said. “The ballet is boring.” His slim hand found its way under the flap of the Admiral’s greatcoat. “You’re such a big bear of a man,” he murmured. The Admiral grinned and picked up the car’s telephone and dialed a number. “Let me talk, you naughty boy,” he murmured.

“Zurahv here,” he growled into the telephone. “Issue orders at once to Captain Kovitz to leave Tripoli and to proceed down the course line of his target and listen for sonar buoys. Yes, I know what the freighter Captain said. He’s a merchant marine captain and he knows little about sonar. I want a reliable check. Yes. Send those orders at once.” He hung up the telephone and spoke into the car’s intercom system to the driver.

“My apartment.” As the car moved out of the alleyway he unbuttoned his greatcoat to give Lubutkin greater freedom.

Captain Nikita Kovitz watched from the bridge of his submarine as the crew of a Libyan motor launch struggled to unshackle a cable that held his ship’s bow to a mooring buoy in the outer reaches of Tripoli harbor. There was a splash in the water and a bellow of criticism from the coxswain of the motor launch. Captain Kovitz grinned at the Officer of the Deck.

“Clumsy bastards probably dropped the shackle in the water. Those monkey men can’t do anything right. Wait until they get well clear with that motor launch before we get underway. We’ll be on the surface for an hour before submerging. Keep a sharp lookout for fishing boats. The bastards don’t usually carry running lights and if we hit one of them we’ll be tied up in court here for six months. I’m going below, notify me fifteen minutes before we dive.”.He dropped down the ladders to the Command Center where he checked the log book and then he went to his cabin. His Navigator came in response to his summons.

“I want to traverse the Strait of Gibraltar at night, submerged, Navigator. Make sure that our speeds are right for that timing. When we leave the Strait we’ll go to four hundred feet and proceed at fifteen knots. We’ll slow to ten knots when we reach the target area. I want a Battle Condition One sonar watch set at that time.”

“The earlier message said that a freighter equipped with sonar made that run and got a negative result,” the Navigator said. “If we’re listening for sonar buoys it must mean the Americans have found their submarine and have marked it. I can’t believe that, not in that depth of water.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Kovitz said. “If Admiral Zurahv sent a freighter to search out the possibility of sonar buoys around our target it means that someone has told him the Americans found their submarine. I don’t think the Admiral would come up with that idea by himself. He’s not one of our more innovative thinkers.

“Apparently he wants us to double-check on the freighter’s results. That figures, our sonar is much better than what they’d have on some freighter.”

“Yes, sir,” the Navigator said. “I’ve been wondering why they ordered us here to port in such a hurry. Do you know?”

“No,” Kovitz said. He got up from his chair and went to a chart on the bulkhead above his desk. “Once we begin the sonar search I want everyone to be alert. If we don’t find anything on the first run down the course line we’ll make runs back and forth on either side of the course line. The target may have skewed well off the course line after she was hit.”

“Yes, sir,” the Navigator said. He cleared his throat. “Comrade Captain, we are not at war so one must assume that some very complicated political events are taking place. The summons you received to fly to Moscow, you didn’t mention anything about that trip to me, Comrade.”

“No, I didn’t,” Captain Kovitz said. “You’d better take care of laying down the courses and speeds, we’ll be submerging in a half hour or so.”

Admiral Brannon was finishing his second cup of coffee when the telephone rang at 2000 hours, eight o’clock in the evening. His wife rose from the dinner table and went into the kitchen to answer the phone. She came back, smiling and nodding her head at Brannon, who went into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

“Commander Fencer, Admiral. The Watch Officer in the Black Room just informed me that the submarine that had been patrolling off Morocco and then left that area and went into the Mediterranean has been footprinted clearing the Strait of Gibraltar. She’s running on the same course as Sharkfin was on, sir.”

“Thank you, Commander. Are you at home? Could you meet me in the Black Room in, oh, half an hour or so? Good.” He put the phone in its cradle and then picked it up again and dialed the Officer of the Day at the Pentagon and ordered a car and driver to pick him up and another car and driver to get Admiral Olsen. Twenty minutes later he walked into the Black Room.

“You got here in a hurry, John,” he said to Olsen. “Your Swedish ESP working or something?”

“No, sir. This is Joan’s bowling night and I stayed in the office to catch up with some of the paperwork. The OOD checked the Out Log and found I was still in the building.” He nodded at the lighted glass wall of the Black Room where a black line was barely moving on a course slightly to the north and west out of the Strait of Gibraltar.

“Our boy is back. He sure as hell isn’t on his way to his regular patrol area off Morocco. If he were he would have turned south by now.”

Brannon turned to Commander Fencer. “You people do a damned good job, John. I want you to tell your watch standers that, if you will.

“Could you have them lay down Sharkfin’s course from her last position report on out to where we found her?”

Fencer spoke into the microphone and a red line appeared on the glass wall and overlaid the creeping black line.

“I wonder where that murdering son of a bitch is going, what he’s up to?” Brannon growled. “Is he going back out to the scene of the crime to gloat?”

“Might be something else,” Olsen said. “Wilson told his contact to tell the Russians that we had found Sharkfin and taken pictures of her on the bottom. The Russians are pretty damned good sailors. If I were in their shoes right now I’d figure that if we found the Sharkfin we’d put down sonar buoys to mark her on the bottom. Maybe they’re trying to listen for those buoys, see if we were running a bluff.”

“Medusa would drop sonar buoys, wouldn’t she, when she found Sharkfin on the bottom?” Brannon looked at Commander Fencer.

“Yes, sir, that’s standard operating procedure. When the Medusa picks up an ocean bottom formation that looks odd or unusual and needs detailed charting, she drops sonar buoys to mark the area so she can home in on the buoys and make as many runs over the area as she has to get a good bottom charting or to take pictures.”

“Then he’ll hear the buoys and they’ll know we’re not bluffing,” Brannon said.

“I don’t think so, sir,” Fencer said. “Medusa is an oceanographic ship, sir. The sonar buoys she uses are Title C, disposable. They beep for just twenty-four hours, as a rule. Long enough for the ship to make its runs. The buoys are rigged with an anchor and fifty fathoms of line. After twenty-four hours they automatically flood, go dead and sink to the bottom.”

“Then the bastards won’t know,” Brannon said slowly. “They’ll think that Wilson was running a bluff. Damn it!” He turned to Commander Fencer.

“I’ll be in my office. Please have your Watch Officer keep me informed.”

John Olsen found the coffee gear in the Yeoman’s office and made a pot of coffee. When he walked into Brannon’s office he found the Admiral standing at his wall chart, a pair of dividers and a parallel ruler in his hands.

“ Orca’s last position report puts her here, at this point,” Brannon said. “I figure she’s here by now, at this mark. Devilfish is to the north, near the Medusa.”

“Let’s get a maneuvering board and work this out,” Olsen said. “We want to give Orca and Devilfish the advantage of position, every advantage we can so they don’t join Sharkfin on the bottom.”

Brannon turned from the chart. “You’re assuming that I’m going to order them to go after the Soviet sub?”

“What else?” Olsen grunted.