“He’s passed us. On the port bow, and I think the turn has stopped. Betcha he’s settled back down on one-nine-zero.” Jones looked up with a grin. “We did it again, Skipper.”
“Okay. Good work, you men.” Mancuso went back to the attack center. Everyone was waiting expectantly. The Dallas was dead in the water, drifting slowly downward with her slight negative trim.
“Let’s get the engines turned back on. Build her up slowly to thirteen knots.” A few seconds later an almost imperceptible noise began as the reactor plant increased power. A moment after that the speed gauge twitched upward. The Dallas was moving again.
“Attention, this is the captain speaking,” Mancuso said into the sound-powered communications system. The electrically powered speakers were turned off, and his word would be relayed by watchstanders in all compartments. “They circled us again without picking us up. Well done, everybody. We can all breathe again.” He placed the handset back in its holder. “Mr. Goodman, let’s get back on her tail.”
“Aye, Skipper. Left five degrees rudder, helm.”
“Left five degrees’ rudder, aye.” The helmsman acknowledged the order, turning his wheel as he did so. Ten minutes later the Dallas was back astern of her contact.
A constant fire control solution was set up on the attack director. The Mark 48 torpedoes would barely have sufficient distance to arm themselves before striking the target in twenty-nine seconds.
Ministry of Defense, Moscow
“And how are you feeling, Misha?”
Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov looked up from a large pile of documents. He looked flushed and feverish still. Dmitri Ustinov, the defense minister, worried about his old friend. He should have stayed in the hospital another few days as the doctors had advised. But Misha had never been one to take advice, only orders.
“I feel good, Dmitri. Any time you walk out of a hospital you feel good — even if you are dead,” Filitov smiled.
“You still look sick,” Ustinov observed.
“Ah! At our age you always look sick. A drink, Comrade Defense Minister?” Filitov hoisted a bottle of Stolychnaya vodka from a desk drawer.
“You drink too much, my friend,” Ustinov chided.
“I do not drink enough. A bit more antifreeze and I would not have caught cold last week.” He poured two tumblers half full and held one out to his guest. “Here, Dmitri, it is cold outside.”
Both men tipped their glasses, took a gulp of the clear liquid, and expelled their breath with an explosive pah.
“I feel better already.” Filitov’s laugh was hoarse. ‘Tell me, what became of that Lithuanian renegade?”
“We’re not sure,” Ustinov said.
“Still? Can you tell me now what his letter said?”
Ustinov took another swallow before explaining. When he finished the story Filitov was leaning forward at his desk, shocked.
“Mother of God! And he has still not been found? How many heads?”
“Admiral Korov is dead. He was arrested by the KGB, of course, and died of a brain hemorrhage soon thereafter.”
“A nine-millimeter hemorrhage, I trust,” Filitov observed coldly. “How many times have I said it? What goddamned use is a navy? Can we use it against the Chinese? Or the NATO armies that threaten us — no! How many rubles does it cost to build and fuel those pretty barges for Gorshkov, and what do we get for it — nothing! Now he loses one submarine and the whole fucking fleet cannot find it. It is a good thing that Stalin is not alive.”
Ustinov agreed. He was old enough to remember what happened then to anyone who reported results short of total success. “In any case, Padorin may have saved his skin. There is one extra element of control on the submarine.”
“Padorin!” Filitov took another gulp of his drink. “That eunuch! I’ve only met him, what, three times. A cold fish, even for a commissar. He never laughs, even when he drinks. Some Russian he is. Why is it, Dmitri, that Gorshkov keeps so many old farts like that around?”
Ustinov smiled into his drink. “The same reason I do, Misha.” Both men laughed.
“So, how will Comrade Padorin save our secrets and keep his skin? Invent a time machine?”
Ustinov explained to his old friend. There weren’t many men whom the defense minister could speak to and feel comfortable with. Filitov drew the pension of a full colonel of tanks and still wore the uniform proudly. He had faced combat for the first time on the fourth day of the Great Patriotic War, as the Fascist invaders were driving east. Lieutenant Filitov had met them southeast of Brest Litovsk with a troop of T-34/76 tanks. A good officer, he had survived his first encounter with Guderian’s panzers, retreated in good order, and fought a constant mobile action for days before being caught in the great encirclement at Minsk. He had fought his way out of that trap, and later another at Vyasma, and had commanded a battalion spearheading Zhukov’s counterblow from the suburbs of Moscow. In 1942 Filitov had taken part in the disastrous counter-offensive toward Kharkov but again escaped, this time on foot, leading the battered remains of regiment from that dreadful cauldron on the Dnieper River. With another regiment later that year he had led the drive that shattered the Italian Army on the flank of Stalingrad and encircled the Germans. He’d been wounded twice in that campaign. Filitov had acquired the reputation of a commander who was both good and lucky. That luck had run out at Kursk, where he had battled the troopers of SS division Das Reich. Leading his men into a furious tank battle, Filitov and his vehicle had run straight into an ambush of eighty-eight-millimeter guns. That he had survived at all was a miracle. His chest still bore the scars from the burning tank, and his right arm was next to useless. This was enough to retire a charging tactical commander who had won the old star of the Hero of the Soviet Union no less than three times, and a dozen other decorations.
After months of being shuttled from one hospital to another, he had become a representative of the Red Army in the armament factories that had been moved to the Urals east of Moscow. The drive that made him a premiere combat soldier would come to serve the State even better behind the lines. A born organizer, Filitov learned to run roughshod over factory bosses to streamline production, and he cajoled design engineers to make the small but often crucial changes in their products that would save crews and win battles.
It was in these factories that Filitov and Ustinov first met, the scarred combat veteran and the gruff apparatchik detailed by Stalin to produce enough tools to drive the hated invaders back. After a few clashes, the young Ustinov came to recognize that Filitov was totally fearless and would not be bullied on a question involving quality control or fighting efficiency. In the midst of one disagreement, Filitov had practically dragged Ustinov into the turret of a tank and taken it through a combat training course to make his point. Ustinov was the sort who only had to be shown something once, and they soon became fast friends. He could not fail to admire the courage of a soldier who could say no to the people’s commissar of armaments. By mid-1944 Filitov was a permanent part of his staff, a special inspector — in short, a hatchet man. When there was a problem at a factory, Filitov saw that it was settled, quickly. The three gold stars and the crippling injuries were usually enough to persuade the factory bosses to mend their ways — and if not, Misha had the booming voice and vocabulary to make a sergeant major wince.
Never a high Party official, Filitov gave his boss valuable input from people in the field. He still worked closely with the tank design and production teams, often taking a prototype or randomly chosen production model through a test course with a team of picked veterans to see for himself how well things worked. Crippled arm or not, it was said that Filitov was among the best gunners in the Soviet Union. And he was a humble man. In 1965 Ustinov thought to surprise his friend with general’s stars and was somewhat angered by Filitov’s reaction — he had not earned them on the field of battle, and that was the only way a man could earn stars. A rather impolitic remark, as Ustinov wore the uniform of a marshal of the Soviet Union, earned for his Party work and industrial management, it nevertheless demonstrated that Filitov was a true New Soviet Man, proud of what he was and mindful of his limitations.
It is unfortunate, Ustinov thought, that Misha has been so unlucky otherwise. He had been married to a lovely woman, Elena Filitov, who had been a minor dancer with the Kirov when the youthful officer had met her. Ustinov remembered her with a trace of envy; she had been the perfect soldier’s wife. She had given the State two fine sons. Both were now dead. The elder had died in 1956, still a boy, an officer cadet sent to Hungary because of his political reliability and killed by counterrevolutionaries before his seventeenth birthday. He was a soldier who had taken a soldier’s chance. But the younger had been killed in a training accident, blown to pieces by a faulty breech mechanism in a brand-new T-55 tank in 1959. That had been a disgrace. And Elena had died soon thereafter, of grief more than anything else. Too bad.