The president held his hand up. “No buts, Alex. If we cannot cooperate in something like this, how can we hope to cooperate in more serious matters? If memory serves, last year when one of our navy patrol aircraft crashed off the Aleutians, one of your fishing vessels” — it had been an intelligence trawler — “picked up the crew, saved their lives. Alex, we owe you a debt for that, a debt of honor, and the United States will not be said to be ungrateful.” He paused for effect. “They’re probably all dead, you know. I don’t suppose there’s more chance of surviving a sub accident than of surviving a plane crash. But at least the crew’s families will know. Jeff, don’t we have some specialized submarine rescue equipment?”
“With all the money we give the navy? We damned well ought to. I’ll call Foster about it.”
“Good,” the president said. “Alex, it is too much to expect that your mutual suspicions will be allayed by something so small as this. Your history and ours conspire against us. But let’s make a small beginning with this. If we can shake hands in space or over a conference table in Vienna, maybe we can do it here also. I will give the necessary instructions to my commanders as soon as we’re finished here.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Arbatov concealed his uneasiness.
“And please convey my respects to Chairman Narmonov and my sympathy for the families of your missing men. I appreciate his effort, and yours, in getting this information to us.”
“Yes. Mr. President.” Arbatov rose. He left after shaking hands. What were the Americans really up to? He’d warned Moscow: call it a rescue mission and they’d demand to help. It was their stupid Christmas season, and Americans were addicted to happy endings. It was madness not to call it something else — to hell with the protocol.
At the same time he was forced to admire the American president. A strange man, very open, yet full of guile. A friendly man most of the time, yet always ready to seize the advantage. He remembered stories his grandmother had told, about how the gypsies switched babies. The American president was very Russian.
“Well,” the president said after the doors closed, “now we can keep a nice close eye on them, and they can’t complain. They’re lying and we know it — but they don’t know we know.
And we’re lying, and they certainly suspect it, but not why we’re lying. Gawd! and I told him this morning that not knowing was dangerous! Jeff, I’ve been thinking about this. I do not like the fact that so much of their navy is operating off our coast. Ryan was right, the Atlantic is our ocean. I want the air force and the navy to cover them like a goddamned blanket! That’s our ocean, and I damned well want them to know it.” The president finished off his drink. “On the question of the sub, I want our people to have a good look at it, and whoever of the crew wants to defect, we take care of. Quietly, of course.”
“Of course. As a practical matter, having the officers is as great a coup as having the submarine.”
“But the navy still want to keep it.”
“I just don’t see how we can do that, not without eliminating the crewmen, and we can’t do that.”
“Agreed.” The president buzzed his secretary. “Get me General Hilton.”
The Pentagon
The air force’s computer center was in a subbasement of the Pentagon. The room temperature was well below seventy degrees. It was enough to make Tyler’s leg ache where it met the metal-plastic prosthesis. He was used to that.
Tyler was sitting at a control console. He had just finished a trial run of his program, named MORAY after the vicious eel that inhabited oceanic reefs. Skip Tyler was proud of his programming ability. He’d taken the old dinosaur program from the files of the Taylor Lab, adapted it to the common Defense Department computer language, ADA — named for Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron — and then tightened it up. For most people this would have been a month’s work. He’d done it in four days, working almost around the clock not only because the money was an attractive incentive but also because the project was a professional challenge. He ended the job quietly satisfied that he could still meet an impossible deadline with time to spare. It was eight in the evening. MORAY had just run through a one-variable-value test and not crashed. He was ready.
He’d never seen the Cray-2 before, except in photographs, and he was pleased to have a chance to use it. The -2 was five units of raw electrical power, each one roughly pentagonal in shape, about six feet high and four across. The largest unit was the main-frame processor bank; the other four were memory banks, arrayed around it in a cruciform configuration. Tyler typed in the command to load his variable sets. For each of the Red October’s main dimensions — length, beam, height — he input ten discrete numerical values. Then came six subtly different values for her hull form block and prismatic coefficients. There were five sets of tunnel dimensions. This aggregated to over thirty thousand possible permutations. Next he keyed in eighteen power variables to cover the range of possible engine systems. The Cray-2 absorbed this information and placed each number in its proper slot. It was ready to run.
“Okay,” he announced to the system operator, an air force master sergeant.
“Roge.” The sergeant typed “XQT” into his terminal. The Cray-2 went to work.
Tyler walked over to the sergeant’s console.
“That’s a right lengthy program you’ve input, sir.” The sergeant laid a ten-dollar bill on the top of the console. “Betcha my baby can run it in ten minutes.”
“Not a chance.” Tyler laid his own bill next to the sergeant’s. “Fifteen minutes, easy.”
“Split the difference?”
“Alright. Where’s the head around here?”
“Out the door, sir, turn right, go down the hall and it’s on the left.”
Tyler moved towards the door. It annoyed him that he could not walk gracefully, but after four years the inconvenience was a minor one. He was alive — that’s what counted. The accident had occurred on a cold, clear night in Groton, Connecticut, only a block from the shipyard’s main gate. On Friday at three in the morning he was driving home after a twenty-hour day getting his new command ready for sea. The civilian yard worker had had a long day also, stopping off at a favorite watering hole for a few too many, as the police established afterwards. He got into his car, started it, and ran a red light, ramming Tyler’s Pontiac broadside at fifty miles per hour. For him the accident was fatal. Skip was luckier. It was at an intersection, and he had the green light; when he saw the front end of the Ford not a foot from his left-side door, it was far too late. He did not remember going through a pawnshop window, and the next week, when he hovered near death at the Yale-New Haven hospital, was a complete blank. His most vivid memory was of waking up, eight days later he was to learn, to see his wife, Jean, holding his hand. His marriage up to that point had been a troubled one, not an uncommon problem for nuclear submarine officers. His first sight of her was not a complimentary one — her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was tousled — but she had never looked quite so good. He had never appreciated just how important she was. A lot more important than half a leg.
“Skip? Skip Tyler!”
The former submariner turned awkwardly to see a naval officer running towards him.
“Johnnie Coleman! How the hell are you!”
It was Captain Coleman now, Tyler noted. They had served together twice, a year on the Tecumseh, another on the Shark. Coleman, a weapons expert, had commanded a pair of nuclear subs.
“How’s the family, Skip?”
“Jean’s fine. Five kids now, and another on the way.”
“Damn!” they shook hands with enthusiasm. “You always were a randy bugger. I hear you’re teaching at Annapolis.”
“Yeah, and a little engineering stuff on the side.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m running a program on the air force computer. Checking a new ship configuration for Sea Systems Command.” It was an accurate enough cover story. “What do they have you doing?”
“OP-02’s office. I’m chief of staff for Admiral Dodge.”
“Indeed?” Tyler was impressed. Vice Admiral Sam Dodge was the current OP-02. The office of the deputy chief of naval operations for submarine warfare had administrative control of all aspects of submarine operations. “Keeping you busy?”
“You know it! The crap’s really hit the fan.”
“What do you mean?” Tyler hadn’t seen the news or read a paper since Monday.