“Captain Albert Redman, U.S. Navy.” Toland watched a bay-built fishing boat motoring a few miles away, her captain laying out his crab pots. “He’s an asshole.”
Keegan laughed. “You want to be careful saying stuff like that out loud, Bob, especially seeing how you go on active duty next week. Bert worked with me, oh, must have been fifteen years ago. I had to slap him down a few times. He does tend to be slightly opinionated.”
“Opinionated?” Toland snorted. “That bastard’s so friggin’ narrow-minded his scratch pads are only an inch wide! First there was this new arms control thing, then I came up with something really unusual last Wednesday and he circular-filed it. Hell, I don’t know why he even bothers looking at new data-he made his mind up five years ago.”
“I don’t suppose you could tell me what it was?”
“I shouldn’t.” Bob wavered for a moment. Hell, if he couldn’t talk with his kids’ own grandfather… “One of our ferret birds was over a Soviet military district headquarters last week and intercepted a microwaved telephone conversation. It was a report to Moscow about four colonels in the Carpathian Military District who were being shot for gundecking readiness reports. The story on their court-martial and execution was being set up for publication, probably in a Red Star this week.” He had entirely forgotten about the oil-field fire.
“Oh?” Keegan’s eyebrows went up. “And what did Bert say?”
“He said, ‘It’s Goddamned about time they cleaned their act up.’ And that was that.”
“And what do you say?”
“Pop, I’m not in Trends and Intentions-those idiot fortune-tellers, but I know that even the Russians don’t kill people for jollies. When Ivan kills people publicly, he does it to make a point. These were not manpower officers taking bribes to fake deferments. They weren’t popped for stealing diesel fuel or building dachas with pilfered lumber. I checked our records, and it turned out we have files on two of them. They were both experienced line officers, both with combat experience in Afghanistan, both Party members in good standing. One was a graduate of Frunze Academy, and he even had a few articles published in Military Thought, for God’s sake! But all four were court-martialed for falsifying their regimental readiness reports-and shot three days later. That story will hit the streets in Krasnaya Zvezda over the next few days as a two-or three-part story under ‘The Observer’s’ by-line-and that makes it a political exercise with a capital P.”
The Observer was the cover name for any number of high-ranking officers who contributed to Red Star, the daily newspaper of the Soviet armed services. Anything on the front page and under that by-line was taken quite seriously, both in the Soviet military services and by those whose job it was to watch them, because this by-line was used explicitly to make policy statements approved by both the military high command and the Politburo in Moscow.
“A multipart story?” Keegan asked.
“Yeah, that’s one of the interesting things about it. The repetition means they really want this lesson to sink in. Everything about this is out of pattern, Pop. Something funny is happening. They do shoot officers and EM’s-but not full colonels who’ve written for the journal of the general staff, and not for faking a few lines in a readiness statement.” He let out a long breath, happy to have gotten this off his chest. The workboat was proceeding south, her wake rippling out toward them in parallel lines on the mirrored surface. The image made Toland wish for his camera.
“Makes sense,” Keegan mumbled.
“Huh?”
“What you just said. That does sound out of pattern.”
“Yep. I stayed in late last night, running down a hunch. In the past five years, the Red Army has published the names of exactly fourteen executed officers, none higher than a full colonel, and even then only on manpower officer in Soviet Georgia. The guy was taking payoffs for deferments. The others broke down into one case of spying, for us or somebody, three derelictions of duty while under the influence of alcohol, and nine conventional corruption cases, selling everything from gasoline to a whole mainframe computer nalyevo, ‘on the left,’ the shadow market. Now all of a sudden they waste four regimental commanders, all in the same military district.”
“You could take that to Redman,” Keegan suggested.
“Waste of time.”
“Those other cases-I seem to remember the three guys who-”
“Yeah, that was part of the temperance campaign. Too many guys turn up drunk on duty, and they pick three volunteers, pour encourager les autres.” Bob shook his head. “Jeez, Voltaire would have loved these guys.”
“You talk with people who’re into civilian intelligence?”
“No, my crowd is all military telecommunications.”
“At lunch last-Monday, I think, I was talking with a guy from Langley. Ex-Army, we go way back. Anyway, he was joking that there’s a new shortage over there.”
“Another one?” Bob was amused. Shortages were nothing new in Russia. One month toothpaste, or toilet paper, or windshield wipers-he had heard of many such things over lunch at the NSA commissary.
“Yeah, car and truck batteries.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, for the last month you can’t get a battery for your car or truck over there. A lot of cars are not moving, and batteries are being stolen left and right, so people are disconnecting their batteries at night and taking them home, would you believe?”
“But Togliattishtadt-” Toland said, and stopped. He referred to the massive auto factory-city in European Russia, the construction of which was a “Hero Project” for which thousands of workers had been mobilized. Among the most modem auto complexes in the world, it had been built mainly with Italian technology. “They have a hell of a battery manufacturing facility there. Hasn’t blown up, has it?”
“Working three shifts. What do you think of that?”
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
Toland examined himself in the full-sized mirror in the Norfolk BOQ complex. He’d made the drive down the evening before. The uniform still fit, he noted, maybe a little tight at the waist, but that was nature at work, wasn’t it? His “salad bar” of decorations was a bleak row and a half, but he had his surface warfare officer’s badge, his “water wings” he hadn’t always been a glorified radio operator. His sleeves bore the two and a half stripes of a lieutenant commander. A final swipe of a cloth across his shoes and he was out the door, ready on this bright Monday morning for his annual two weeks of duty with the fleet.
Five minutes later, he was driving down Mitcher Avenue toward headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet-CINCLANTFLT, a flat, thoroughly undistinguished building that had once been a hospital. An habitual early riser, Toland found the Ingersoll Street parking lot half empty, but he was still careful to take an unmarked space lest he incur the wrath of a senior officer.
“Bob? Bob Toland!” a voice called.
“Ed Morris!”
It was now Commander Edward Morris, USN, Toland noted, and a shiny gold star on his uniform jacket designated him as the commander of some ship or other. Toland saluted his friend before shaking hands.
“Still playing bridge, Bob?” Toland, Morris, and two other officers had once established the most regular bridge foursome at the Pearl Harbor officers club.
“Some. Marty isn’t much of a card player, but we got a bunch at work that meets once a week.”
“Good as we used to be?” Morris asked as they headed off in the same direction.
“Are you kidding? You know where I work now?”
“I heard you ended up at Fort Meade after you hung it up.”
“Yeah, and there’s bridge players at NSA who’re wired into the damn computers-I’m talking assassins!”
“So how’s the family?”
“Just great. How’s yours?”
“Growing up too damned fast-makes you feel old.”
“That’s the truth,” Morris chuckled. He jabbed a finger at his friend’s star. “Now you can tell me about your new kid.”
“Look at my car.”
Toland turned around. Morris’s Ford had a personalized license plate: FF-1094. To the uninitiated it was an ordinary license number, but to a sailor it advertised his command: antisubmarine frigate number one thousand ninety-four, USS PHARRIS.
“You always were nice and modest,” Toland noted with a grin. “That’s all right, Ed. How long you had her?”
“Two years. She’s big, she’s pretty, and she’s mine! You should have stayed in, Bob. The day I took command-hell, it was like the day Jimmy was born.”
“I hear you. The difference, Ed, is that I always knew you’d have your ship, and I always knew I wouldn’t.” In Toland’s personnel jacket was a letter of admonishment for grounding a destroyer while he had the deck. It had been no more than bad luck. An ambiguity on the chart and adverse tidal conditions had caused the error, but it didn’t take much to ruin a Navy career.
“So, doing your two weeks?”