Admiral White walked in. “Bored, Jack?”
“Not exactly, Admiral. When do we make contact with the Soviets?”
“This evening. Your chaps have given them a very rough time over that Tomcat incident.”
“Good. Maybe people will wake up before something really bad happens.”
“You think it will?” White sat down.
“Well, Admiral, if they really are hunting a missing sub, yes. If not, then they’re here for another purpose entirely, and I’ve guessed wrong. Worse than that, I’ll have to live with that misjudgment — or die with it.”
Norfolk Naval Medical Center
Tait was feeling better. Dr. Jameson had taken over for several hours, allowing him to curl up on a couch in the doctor’s lounge for five hours. That was the most sleep he ever seemed to get in one shot, but it was sufficient to make him look indecently chipper to the rest of the floor staff. He made a quick phone call and some milk was sent up. As a Mormon, Tail avoided everything with caffeine — coffee, tea, even cola drinks — and though this type of self-discipline was unusual for a physician, to say nothing of a uniformed officer, he scarcely thought about it except on rare occasions when he pointed out its longevity benefits to his brother practitioners. Tait drank his milk and shaved in the restroom, emerging ready to face another day.
“Any word on the radiation exposure, Jamie?”
The radiology lab had struck out. “They brought a nucleonics officer over from a sub tender, and he scanned the clothes. There was a possible twenty-rad contamination, not enough for frank physiological effects. I think what it might have been was that the nurse took the sample from the back of his hand. The extremities might still have been suffering from the vascular shutdown. That could explain the depleted white count. Maybe.”
“How is he otherwise?”
“Better. Not much, but better. I think maybe the keflin’s taking hold.” The doctor flipped open the chart. “White count is coming back. I put a unit of whole blood into him two hours ago. The blood chemistry is approaching normal limits. Blood pressure is one hundred over sixty-five, heart rate is ninety-four. Temperature ten minutes ago was 100.8 — it’s been fluctuating for several hours.
“His heart looks pretty good. In fact, I think he’s going to make it, unless something unexpected crops up.” Jameson reminded himself that in extreme hypothermia cases the unexpected can take a month or more to appear.
Tait examined the chart, remembering what he had been like years ago. A bright young doc, just like Jamie, certain that he could cure the world. It was a good feeling. A pity that experience — in his case, two years at Danang — beat that out of you. Jamie was right, though; there was enough improvement here to make the patient’s chances appear measurably better.
“What are the Russians doing?” Tail asked.
“Petchkin has the watch at the moment. When it came his turn, and he changed into scrubs — you know he has that Captain Smirnov holding onto his clothes, like he expected us to steal them or something?”
Tait explained that Petchkin was a KGB agent.
“No kidding? Maybe he has a gun tucked away.” Jameson chuckled. “If he does, he’d better watch it. We got three marines up here with us.”
“Marines. What for?”
“Forgot to tell you. Some reporter found out we had a Russkie up here and tried to bluff his way onto the floor. A nurse stopped him. Admiral Blackburn found out and went ape. The whole floor’s sealed off. What’s the big secret, anyway?”
“Beats me, but that’s the way it is. What do you mink of this Petchkin guy?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met any Russians before. They don’t smile a whole lot. The way they’re taking turns watching the patient, you’d think they expect us to make off with him.”
“Or maybe that he’ll say something they don’t want us to hear?” Tait wondered. “Did you get the feeling that they might not want him to make it? I mean, when they didn’t want to tell us about what his sub was?”
Jameson thought about that. “No. The Russians are supposed to make a secret of everything, aren’t they? Anyway, Smirnov did come through with it.”
“Get some sleep, Jamie.”
“Aye, Cap’n.” Jameson walked off toward the lounge.
We asked them what kind of a sub, the captain thought, meaning whether it was a nuke or not. What if they thought we were asking if it was a missile sub? That makes sense, doesn’t it? Yeah. A missile sub right off our coast, and all this activity in the North Atlantic. Christmas season. Dear God! If they were going to do it, they’d do it right now, wouldn’t they? He walked down the hall. A nurse came out of the room with a blood sample to be taken down to the lab. This was being done hourly, and it left Petchkin alone with the patient for a few minutes.
Tait walked around the comer and saw Petchkin through the window, sitting in a chair at the corner of the bed and watching his countryman, who was still unconscious. He had on green scrubs. Made to put on in a hurry, these were reversible, with a pocket on both sides so a surgeon didn’t have to waste a second to see if they were inside out. As Tait watched, Petchkin reached for something through the low collar.
“Oh, God!” Tait raced around the corner and shot through the swinging door. Petchkin’s look of surprise changed to amazement as the doctor batted a cigarette and lighter from his hand, then to outrage as he was lifted from his chair and flung towards the door. Tait was the smaller of the two, but his sudden burst of energy was sufficient to eject the man from the room. “Security!” Tait screamed.
“What is the meaning of this?” Petchkin demanded. Tait was holding him in a bearhug. Immediately he heard feet racing down the hall from the lobby.
“What is it, sir?” A breathless marine lance corporal with a .45 Colt in his right hand skidded to a halt on the tile floor.
“This man just tried to kill my patient!”
“What!” Petchkin’s face was crimson.
“Corporal, your post is now at that door. If this man tries to get into that room, you will stop him any way you have to. Understood?”
“Aye aye, sir!” the corporal looked at the Russian. “Sir, would you please step away from the door?”
“What is the meaning of this outrage!”
“Sir, you will step away from the door, right now.” The marine bolstered his pistol.
“What is going on here?” It was Ivanov, who had sense enough to ask this question in a quiet voice from ten feet away.
“Doctor, do you want your sailor to survive or not?” Tait asked, trying to calm himself.
“What — of course we wish him to survive. How can you ask this?”
“Then why did Comrade Petchkin just try to kill him?”
“I did not do such a thing!” Petchkin shouted.
“What did he do, exactly?” Ivanov asked.
Before Tait could answer, Petchkin spoke rapidly in Russian, then switched to English. “I was reaching for a smoke, that is all. I have no weapon. I wish to kill no one. I only wish to have a cigarette.”
“We have No Smoking signs all over the floor, except in the lobby — you didn’t see them? You were in a room in intensive care, with a patient on hundred-percent oxygen, the air and bedclothes saturated with oxygen, and you were going to flick your goddamned Bic!” The doctor rarely used profanity. “Oh sure, you’d get burned some, and it would look like an accident — and that kid would be dead! I know what you are, Petchkin, and I don’t think you’re that stupid. Get off my floor!”
The nurse, who had been watching this, went into the patient’s room. She came back out with a pack of cigarettes, two loose ones, a plastic butane lighter, and a curious look on her face.
Petchkin was ashen. “Dr. Tait, I assure you that I had no such intention. What are you saying would happen?”
“Comrade Petchkin,” Ivanov said slowly in English, “there would be an explosion and fire. You cannot have a flame near oxygen.”
“Nichevo!” Petchkin finally realized what he had done. He had waited for the nurse to leave — medical people never let you smoke when you ask. He didn’t know the first thing about hospitals, and as a KGB agent he was accustomed to doing whatever he wanted. He started speaking to Ivanov in Russian. The Soviet doctor looked like a parent listening to a child’s explanation for a broken glass. His response was spirited.
For his part, Tait began to wonder if he hadn’t overreacted — anyone who smoked was an idiot to begin with.