Judge Moore pulled a cigar from his jacket pocket and lit it, looking past the flame into Ryan’s eyes. The judge, everyone said, had been a hell of a field officer in his day. He’d worked with Hans Tofte during the Korean War and had been instrumental in bringing off one of the CIA’s legendary missions, the disappearance of a Norwegian ship that had been carrying a cargo of medical personnel and supplies for the Chinese. The loss had delayed a Chinese offensive for several months, saving thousands of American and allied lives. But it had been a bloody operation. All of the Chinese personnel and all of the Norwegian crewmen had vanished. It was a bargain in the simple mathematics of war, but the morality of the mission was another matter. For this reason, or perhaps another, Moore had soon thereafter left government service to become a trial lawyer in his native Texas. His career had been spectacularly successful, and he’d advanced from wealthy courtroom lawyer to distinguished appellate judge. He had been recalled to the CIA three years earlier because of his unique combination of absolute personal integrity and experience in black operations. Judge Moore hid a Harvard law degree and a highly ordered mind behind the facade of a West Texas cowboy, something he had never been but simulated with ease.
“So, Dr. Ryan, what do you think of this?” Moore said as the deputy director of operations came in. “Hi, Bob, come on over here. We just showed Ryan here the WILLOW file.”
“Oh?” Ritter slid a chair over, neatly trapping Ryan in the corner. “And what does the admiral’s fair-haired boy think of that?”
“Gentlemen, I assume that you all regard this information as genuine,” Ryan said cautiously, getting nods. “Sir, if this information was hand delivered by the Archangel Michael, I’d have trouble believing it — but since you gentlemen say it’s reliable…” They wanted his opinion. The problem was, his conclusion was too incredible. Well, he decided, I’ve gotten this far by giving my honest opinions…
Ryan took a deep breath and gave them his evaluation.
“Very well, Dr. Ryan,” Judge Moore nodded sagaciously. “First I want to hear what else it might be, then I want you to defend your analysis.”
“Sir, the most obvious alternative doesn’t bear much thinking about. Besides, they’ve been able to do it since Friday and they haven’t done it,” Ryan said, keeping his voice low and reasonable. Ryan had trained himself to be objective. He ran through the four alternatives he had considered, careful to examine each in detail. This was no time to allow personal views to intrude on his thinking. He spoke for ten minutes.
“I suppose there’s one more possibility, Judge,” he concluded. “This could be disinformation aimed at blowing this source. I cannot evaluate that possibility.”
“The thought has occurred to us. All right, now that you’ve gone this far, you might as well give your operational recommendation.”
“Sir, the admiral can tell you what the navy’ll say.”
“I sorta figured that one out, boy,” Moore laughed. “What do you think?”
“Judge, setting up the decision tree on this will not be easy — there are too many variables, too many possible contingencies. But I’d say yes. If it’s possible, if we can work out the details, we ought to try. The biggest question is the availability of our own assets. Do we have the pieces in place?”
Greer answered. “Our assets are slim. One carrier, Kennedy. I checked. Saratoga’s in Norfolk with an engineering casualty. On the other hand, HMS Invincible was just over here for the NATO exercise, sailed from Norfolk Monday night. Admiral White, I believe, commanding a small battle group.”
“Lord White, sir?” Ryan asked. “The earl of Weston?”
“You know him?” Moore asked.
“Yes, sir. Our wives are friendly. I hunted with him last September, a grouse shoot in Scotland. He makes noises like a good operator, and I hear he has a good reputation.”
“You’re thinking we might want to borrow their ships, James?” Moore asked. “If so, we’ll have to tell them about this. But we have to tell our side first. There’s a meeting of the National Security Council at one this afternoon. Ryan, you will prepare the briefing papers and deliver the briefing yourself.”
Ryan blinked. “That’s not much time, sir.”
“James here says you work well under pressure. Prove it.” He looked at Greer. “Get a copy of his briefing papers and be ready to fly to London. That’s the president’s decision. If we want their boats, we’ll have to tell them why. That means briefing the prime minister, and that’s your job. Bob, I want you to confirm this report. Do what you have to do, but do not get WILLOW involved.”
“Right,” Ritter replied.
Moore looked at his watch. “We’ll meet back here at 3:30, depending on how the meeting goes. Ryan, you have ninety minutes. Get cracking.”
What am I being measured for? Ryan wondered. There was talk in the CIA that Judge Moore would be leaving soon for a comfortable ambassadorship, perhaps to the Court of St. James’s, a fitting reward for a man who had worked long and hard to reestablish a close relationship with the British. If the judge left, Admiral Greer would probably move into his office. He had the virtues of age — he wouldn’t be around that long — and of friends on Capitol Hill. Ritter had neither. He had complained too long and too openly about congressmen who leaked information on his operations and his field agents, getting men killed in the process of demonstrating their importance on the local cocktail circuit. He also had an ongoing feud with the chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee.
With that sort of reshuffling at the top and this sudden access to new and fantastic information… What does it mean for me? Ryan asked himself. They couldn’t want him to be the next DDL He knew he didn’t have anything like the experience required for that job — though maybe in another five or six years…
Reykjanes Ridge
Ramius inspected his status board. The Red October was heading southwest on track eight, the westernmost surveyed route on what Northern Fleet submariners called Gorshkov’s Railroad. His speed was thirteen knots. It never occurred to him that this was an unlucky number, an Anglo-Saxon superstition. They would hold this course and speed for another twenty hours. Immediately behind him, Kamarov was seated at the submarine’s gravitometer board, a large rolled chart behind him. The young lieutenant was chain-smoking, and looked tense as he ticked off their position on the chart. Ramius did not disturb him. Kamarov knew this job, and Borodin would relieve him in another two hours.
Installed in the Red October’s keel was a highly sensitive device called a gradiometer, essentially two large lead weights separated by a space of one hundred yards. A laser-computer system measured the space between the weights down to a fraction of an angstrom. Distortions of that distance or lateral movement of the weights indicated variations in the local gravitational field. The navigator compared these highly precise local values to the values on his chart. With careful use of gravitometers in the ship’s inertial navigation system, he could plot the vessel’s location to within a hundred meters, half the length of the ship.
The mass-sensing system was being added to all the submarines that could accommodate it. Younger attack boat commanders, Ramius knew, had used it to run the Railroad at high speed. Good for the commander’s ego, Ramius judged, but a little hard on the navigator. He felt no need for recklessness. Perhaps the letter had been a mistake… No, it prevented second thoughts. And the sensor suites on attack submarines simply were not good enough to detect the Red October so long as he maintained his silent routine. Ramius was certain of this; he had used them all. He would get where he wanted to go, do what he wanted to do, and nobody, not his own countrymen, not even the Americans, would be able to do a thing about it. That’s why earlier he had listened to the passage of an Alfa thirty miles to his east and smiled.
The White House
Judge Moore’s CIA car was a Cadillac limousine that came with a driver and a security man who kept an Uzi sub-machinegun under the dashboard. The driver turned right off Pennsylvania Avenue onto Executive Drive. More a parking lot than a street, this served the needs of senior officials and reporters who worked at the White House and the Executive Office Building. “Old State,” that shining example of Institutional Grotesque that towered over the executive mansion. The driver pulled smoothly into a vacant VIP slot and jumped out to open the doors after the security man had swept the area with his eyes. The judge got out first and went ahead, and as Ryan caught up he found himself walking on the man’s left, half a step behind. It took a moment to remember that this instinctive action was exactly what the marine corps had taught him at Quantico was the proper way for a junior officer to accompany his betters. It forced Ryan to consider just how junior he was.