“So, our young GRU comrade will blow up the missile. What of the warheads?” Narmonov asked. An engineer by training, he could always be distracted by technical discourse, always impressed by a clever one.
“Comrade,” Vishenkov went on, “the missile warheads are armed by accelerometers. Thus they cannot be armed until the missile reaches its full programmed speed. The Americans use the same system, and for the same reason, to prevent sabotage. These safety systems are absolutely reliable. You could drop one of the reentry vehicles from the top of the Moscow television transmitter onto a steel plate and it would not fire.” The general referred to the massive TV tower whose construction Narmonov had personally supervised while head of the Central Communications Directorate. Vishenkov was a skilled political operator.
“In the case of a solid-fuel rocket,” Padorin continued, recognizing his debt to Vishenkov, wondering what he’d ask for in return, and hoping he’d live long enough to deliver, “a safety package ignites all of the missile’s three stages simultaneously.”
“So the missile just takes off?” Alexandrov asked.
“No, Comrade Academician. The upper stage might, if it could break through the missile tube hatch, and this would flood the missile room, sinking the submarine. But even if it did not, there is sufficient thermal energy in either of the first two stages to reduce the entire submarine to a puddle of molten iron, twenty times what is necessary to sink it. Loginov has been trained to bypass the alarm system on the missile tube hatch, to activate the safety package, set a timer, and escape.”
“Not just to destroy the ship?” Narmonov asked.
“Comrade General Secretary,” Padorin said, “it is too much to ask a young man to do his duty, knowing that it means certain death. We would be unrealistic to expect this. He must have at least the possibility of escape, otherwise human weakness might lead to failure.”
“This is reasonable,” Alexandrov said. “Young men are motivated by hope, not fear. In this case, young Loginov would hope for a considerable reward.”
“And get it,” Narmonov said. “We will make every effort to save this young man, Gorshkov.”
“If he is truly reliable,” Alexandrov noted.
“I know that my life depends on this, Comrade Academician,” Padorin said, his back still straight. He did not get a verbal answer, only nods from half the heads at the table. He had faced death before and was at the age where it remains the last thing a man need face.
The White House
Arbatov came into the Oval Office at 4:50 P.M. He found the president and Dr. Pelt sitting in easy chairs across from the chief executive’s desk.
“Come on over, Alex. Coffee?” The president pointed to a tray on the corner of his desk. He was not drinking today, Arbatov noted.
“No, thank you, Mr. President. May I ask — “
“We think we found your sub, Alex,” Pelt answered. “They just brought these dispatches over, and we’re checking them now.” The adviser held up a ring binder of message forms.
“Where is it, may I ask?” The ambassador’s face was deadpan.
“Roughly three hundred miles northeast of Norfolk. We have not located it exactly. One of our ships noted an underwater explosion in the area — no, that’s not right. It was recorded on a ship, and when the tapes were checked a few hours later, they thought they heard a submarine explode and sink. Sorry, Alex,” Pelt said. “I should have known better than to read through all this stuff without an interpreter. Does your navy talk in its own language, too?”
“Officers do not like for civilians to understand them,” Arbatov smiled. “This has doubtless been true since the first man picked up a stone.”
“Anyway, we have ships and aircraft searching the area now.”
The president looked up. “Alex, I talked to the chief of naval operations, Dan Foster, a few minutes ago. He said not to expect any survivors. The water there’s over a thousand feet deep, and you know what the weather is like. They said it’s right on the edge of the continental shelf.”
“The Norfolk Canyon, sir,” Pelt added.
“We are conducting a thorough search,” the president continued. “The navy is bringing in some specialized rescue equipment, search gear, all that sort of thing. If the submarine is located, we’ll get somebody down to them on the chance there might be survivors. From what the CNO tells me it is just possible that there might be if the interior partitions — bulkheads, I think he called them — are intact. The other question is their air supply, he said. Time is very much against us, I’m afraid. All this fantastically expensive equipment we buy them, and they can’t locate one damned object right off our coast.”
Arbatov made a mental record of these words. It would make a worthwhile intelligence report. The president occasionally let —
“By the way, Mr. Ambassador, what exactly was your submarine doing mere?”
“I have no idea, Dr. Pelt.”
“I trust it was not a missile sub,” Pelt said. “We have an agreement to keep those five hundred miles offshore. The wreck will of course be inspected by our rescue craft. Were we to learn that it is indeed a missile sub…”
“Your point is noted. Still, those are international waters.”
The president turned and spoke softly. “So is the Gulf of Finland, Alex, and, I believe, the Black Sea.” He let this observation hang in the air for a moment. “I sincerely hope that we are not heading back to that kind of situation. Are we talking about a missile submarine, Alex?”
“Truly, Mr. President, I have no idea. Certainly I should hope not.”
The president could see how carefully the lie was phrased. He wondered if the Russians would admit that there was a captain out there who had disregarded his orders. No, they would probably claim a navigation error.
“Very well. In any case, we will be conducting our own search and rescue operation. We’ll know soon enough what sort of vessel we’re talking about.” The president looked suddenly uneasy. “One more thing Foster talked about. If we find bodies — pardon the crudity on a Saturday afternoon — I expect that you will want them returned to your country.”
“I have had no instructions on this,” the ambassador answered truthfully, caught off guard.
“It was explained to me in too much detail what a death like this does to a man. In simple terms, they’re crushed by the water pressure, not a very pretty thing to see, they tell me. But they were men, and they deserve some dignity even in death.”
Arbatov conceded the point. “If this is possible, then, I believe that the Soviet people would appreciate this humanitarian gesture.”
“We’ll do our best.”
And the American best, Arbatov remembered, included a ship named the Glomar Explorer. This notorious exploration ship had been built by the CIA for the specific purpose of recovering a Soviet Golf-class missile submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. She had been placed in storage, no doubt to await the next such opportunity. There would be nothing the Soviet Union could do to prevent the operation, a few hundred miles off the American coast, three hundred miles from the United States’ largest naval base.
“I trust that the precepts of international law will be observed, gentlemen. That is, with respect to the vessel’s remains and the crew’s bodies.”
“Of-course, Alex.” The president smiled, gesturing to a memorandum on his desk. Arbatov struggled for control. He’d been led down this path like a schoolboy, forgetting that the American president had been a skilled courtroom tactician — not something that life in the Soviet Union prepares a man for — and knew all about legal tricks. Why was this bastard so easy to underestimate?
The president was also struggling to control himself. It was not often that he saw Alex flustered. This was a clever opponent, not easily caught off balance. Laughing would spoil it.
The memorandum from the attorney general had arrived only that morning. It read:
Mr. President,
Pursuant to your request, I have asked the chief of our admiralty law department to review the question of international law regarding the ownership of sunken or derelict vessels, and the law of salvage pertaining to such vessels. There is a good deal of case law on the subject. One simple example is Dalmas v Stathos (84FSuff. 828, 1949 A.M.C. 770 [S.D.N.Y. 1949]):
No problem of foreign law is here involved, for it is well settled that “salvage is a question arising out of the jus gentium and does not ordinarily depend on the municipal law of particular countries.”
The international basis for this is the Salvage Convention of 1910 (Brussels), which codified the transnational nature of admiralty and salvage law. This was ratified by the United States in the Salvage Act of 1912, 37 Stat. 242, (1912), 46 U.S.C.A. §§ 727-731; and also in 37 Stat. 1658 (1913).