It was possible to access the Navy’s personnel records via computer, and some were doing that right now, checking for former crewmen of USS Dallas. An early-morning call to CoMSuuPAC concerning his tenure as commanding officer of Dallas got no farther than his public affairs officer, who was well-schooled in no-commenting sensitive inquiries. Today he’d get more than his fair share. So would others.
“THIS IS RON Jones.”
“This is Tom Donner at NEC News.”
“That’s nice,” Jonesy said diffidently. “I watch CNN myself.”
“Well, maybe you want to watch our show tonight. I’d like to talk to you about–”
“I read the Times this morning. It’s delivered up here. No comment,” he added.
“But–”
“But, yes, I used to be a submariner, and they call us
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the Silent Service. Besides, that was a long time ago. I run my own business now. Married, kids, the whole nine yards, y’know?”
“You were lead sonar man aboard USS Dallas when–”
“Mr. Donner, I signed a secrecy agreement when I left the Navy. I don’t talk about the things we did, okay?” It was his first encounter with a reporter, and it was living up to everything he’d ever been told to expect.
“Then all you have to do is tell us that it never happened.”
“That what never happened?” Jones asked.
“The defection of a Russian sub named Red October.”
“You know the craziest thing I ever heard as a sonar man?”
“What’s that?”
“Elvis.” He hung up. Then he called Pearl Harbor.
WITH DAYLIGHT, THE TV trucks rolled through Winchester, Virginia, rather like the Civil War armies that had exchanged possession of the town over forty times.
He didn’t actually own the house. It could not even be said that CIA did. The land title was in the name of a paper corporation, in turn owned by a foundation whose directors were obscure, but since real-property ownership in America is a matter of public record, and since all corporations and foundations were also, that data would be run down in less than two days, despite the tag on the files which told the clerks in the county courthouse to be creatively incompetent in finding the documents.
The reporters who showed up had still photos and taped file footage of Nikolay Gerasimov, and long lenses were set up on tripods to aim at the windows, a quarter mile away, past a few grazing horses which made for a nice touch on the story: CIA TREATS RUSSIAN SPYMASTER LIKE VISITING KING.
The two security guards at the house were going ape, calling Langley for instructions, but the CIA’s public affairs office–itself rather an odd institution–didn’t have a clue on this one, other than falling back on the stance
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that this was private property (whether or not that was legally correct under the circumstances was something CIA’s lawyers were checking out) and that, therefore, the reporters couldn’t trespass.
It had been years since he’d had much to laugh about. Sure, there had been the occasional light moment, but this was something so special that he’d never even considered its possibility. He’d always thought himself an expert on America. Gerasimov had run numerous spy operations against the “Main Enemy,” as the United States had once been called in the nonexistent country he’d once served, but he admitted to himself that you had to come here and live here for a few years to understand how incomprehensible America was, how nothing made sense, how literally anything could happen, and the madder it was, the more likely it seemed. No imagination was sufficient to predict what would happen in a day, much less a year. And here was the proof of it.
Poor Ryan, he thought, standing by the window and sipping his coffee. In his country–for him it would always be the Soviet Union–this would never have happened. A few uniformed guards and a hard look would have driven people off, or if the look alone didn’t, then there were other options. But not in America, where the media had all the freedom of a wolf in the Siberian pines–he nearly laughed at that thought, too. In America, wolves were a protected species. Didn’t these fools know that wolves killed people?
“Perhaps they will go away,” Maria said, appearing at his side.
“I think not.”
“Then we must stay inside until they do,” his wife said, terrified at the development.
He shook his head. “No, Maria.”
“But what if they send us back?”
“They won’t. They can’t. One doesn’t do that with defectors. It’s a rule,” he explained. “We never sent Philby, or Burgess, or MacLean back–drunks and degenerates. Oh, no, we protected them, bought them their liquor, and let them diddle with their perversions, because that’s the rule.” He finished his coffee and walked back to the
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kitchen to put the cup and saucer in the dishwasher. He looked at it with a grimace. His apartment in Moscow and his dacha in the Lenin Hills–probably renamed since his departure–hadn’t had an appliance like that one. He’d had servants to do such things. No more. In America convenience was a substitute for power, and comfort the substitute for status.
Servants. It could all have been his. The status, the servants, the power. The Soviet Union could still have been a great nation, respected and admired across the world. He would have become General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He could then have initiated the needed reforms to clear out the corruption and get the country moving again. He would probably have made a full rapprochement with the West, and made a peace, but a peace of equals it would have been, not a total collapse. He’d never been an ideologue, after all, though poor old Alexandrov had thought him so, since Gerasi-mov had always been a Party man–well, what else could you be in a one-party state? Especially if you knew that destiny had selected you for power.
But, no. Destiny had betrayed him, in the person of John Patrick Ryan, on a cold, snowy Moscow night, sitting, he recalled, in a streetcar barn, sitting in a resting tram. And so now he had comfort and security. His daughter would soon be married to what the Americans called “old money,” what other countries called the nobility, and what he called worthless drones–the very reason the Communist Party had won its revolution. His wife was content with her appliances and her small circle of friends. And his own anger had never died.
Ryan had robbed him of his destiny, of the sheer joy of power and responsibility, of being the arbiter of his nation’s path–and then Ryan had taken to himself that same destiny, and the fool didn’t know how to make use of it. The real disgrace was to have been done in by such a person. Well, there was one thing to be done, wasn’t there? Gerasimov walked into the mud room that led out the back, selected a leather jacket, and walked outside. He thought for a moment. Yes, he’d light a cigarette, and just walk up the driveway to where they were, four hundred
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meters away. Along the way he would consider how to couch his remarks, and his gratitude to President Ryan. He’d never stopped studying America, and his observations on how the media thought would now stand him in good stead, he thought.
“DID I WAKE you up, Skipper?” Jones asked. It was about four in the morning at Pearl Harbor.
“Not hardly. You know, my PAO is a woman, and she’s pregnant. I hope all this crap doesn’t put her into early labor.” Rear Admiral (Vice Admiral selectee, now) Mancuso was at his desk, and his phone, on his instructions, wasn’t ringing without a good reason. An old shipmate was such a reason.
“I got a call from NEC, asking about a little job we did in the Atlantic.”
“What did you say?”
“What do you think, Skipper? Zip.” In addition to the honor of the situation, there was also the fact that Jones did most of his work with the Navy. “But–”
“Yeah, but somebody is gonna talk. Somebody always does.”
“They know too much already. The Today Show is doing a live shot from Norfolk, the Eight-Ten Dock. You can guess what they’re saying.”
Mancuso thought about flipping his office TV on, but it was still too early for the NBC morning news show– no. He did flip it on and selected CNN. They were doing sports now, and the top of the hour was coming.
“Next they might ask about another job we did, the one involving a swimmer.”
“Open line, Dr. Jones,” CoMSuePAC warned.
“I didn’t say where, Skipper. It’s just something you’ll want to think about.”
“Yeah,” Mancuso agreed.
“Maybe you can tell me one thine.”
“What’s that, Ron?”
“What’s the big deal? I mean, sure, I won’t talk and neither will you, but somebody will, sure as hell. Too good a