Roger picked up his halogen lamp, sloshed through the shallow edge of the pool, hesitated for only a second—and jumped feet-first into the forty-foot-wide mouth of the tunnel.
Harry followed, cutting the water with less of a splash than Roger had made. Although he knew better, he expected the ice-cold embrace of the sea to snatch his breath away and make his heart stutter, and he gasped involuntarily as the water closed around him. But his battery pack and the heated lining of his wet suit functioned extremely well, and he felt no temperature change from the cavern to the tunnel.
The water was murky. Millions of particles of dirt, clouds of tiny diatoms in sufficient quantity to feed a pack of whales, and beads of ice drifted in the diffused, yellowish beam of the waterproof lamp. Behind the halogen glow, Roger was a half-seen shape, perfectly black and mysterious in his rubber suit, like a shadow that had escaped from the person who had cast it, or like Death himself without his customary scythe.
As instructed, Brian plunged into the water without delay, to thwart a possible attempt on his life after Harry and Roger had departed the cavern.
Roger had already begun to pull himself downward on the multicommunications wire that led back to the Ilya Pogodin.
Harry brought his left wrist close to his face mask to look at the luminous digital readout on his watch: 11:20.
Detonation in forty minutes.
He followed Roger Breskin down into the unknown.
11:22
DETONATION IN THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES
“Officer’s mess to captain.”
In the control room, Nikita Gorov reached for the microphone. “Report.”
The words came out of the squawk box so fast that they ran together and were nearly indecipherable. “We’ve got sweat on the bulkhead here.”
“Which bulkhead?” Gorov asked with businesslike calm, though his stomach fluttered with dread.
“Starboard, sir.”
“How serious?”
“Not very serious, sir. Not at this point. It’s a thin dew, two yards long, a couple of inches wide, just below the ceiling.”
“Any indication of buckling?”
“No, sir.”
“Keep me informed,” he said, without revealing the depth of his concern, and he let go of the microphone.
The technician seated at the surface Fathometer said, “I’m picking up a partial blockage of the hole again.”
“Divers?”
The technician studied the graph for a moment. “Yes. That could be the interpretation. Divers. I’ve got downward movement on all the blips.”
The good news affected everyone. The men were no less tense than they had been a minute ago. For the first time in several hours, however, their tension was qualified by guarded optimism.
“Torpedo room to captain.”
Gorov surreptitiously blotted his damp hands on his slacks and pulled down the microphone once more. “Go ahead.”
The voice was controlled, though an underlying note of distress was apparent. “The sweat on the bulkhead between number four tube and number five tube is getting worse, Captain. I don’t like the looks of it.”
“Worse to what extent?”
“Water’s trickling down to the deck now.”
“How much water?” Gorov asked.
The overhead speaker hissed as the torpedo officer assessed the situation. Then: “An ounce or two.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any buckling?”
“Nothing visible.”
“The rivets?”
“No distortion of the rivet line.”
“Any sounds of metal fatigue?”
“We’ve been going over it with a stethoscope, sir. No alarming noise, no fatigue signatures, just the usual.”
“Then why do you sound so concerned?” Gorov demanded, getting directly to the heart of the issue.
The torpedo officer didn’t respond immediately but finally he said, “Well, sir, when you lay your hand against the steel … there’s a strange vibration.”
“Engine vibrations.”
From the squawk box, the torpedo room officer said, “No, sir. It’s something else. I don’t know just what. But something I’ve never felt before. I think…”
“What?”
“Sir?”
“What do you think,” Gorov demanded. “Spit it out. What do you think you feel when you put your hand to the steel?”
“Pressure.”
Gorov was aware that the control-room crew had already lost its guarded optimism. To the torpedo officer, he said, “Pressure? You can’t feel pressure through the steel. I suggest you control your imagination. There’s no reason to panic. Just keep a close watch on it.”