“This plan the chiefs came up with is crazy, sir.”
“Perhaps, but you’ve been trying to poke a hole in it for several days now, and you haven’t succeeded. The pieces will all fall in place shortly.”
The president was being clever, Pelt saw. The man liked being clever.
The Invincible
“OLYMPUS TO MAGI. I LIKE OLD-FASHIONED MANDOLIN MUSIC. CONCERT APPROVED,” the message said.
Ryan sat back comfortably, sipping at his brandy. “Well, that’s good. I wonder what the next part of the plan is.”
“I expect that Washington will let us know. For the moment,” Admiral White said, “we’ll have to move back west to interpose ourselves between October and the Soviet fleet.”
The Avalon
Lieutenant Ames surveyed the scene through the tiny port on the Avalon’s bow. The Alfa lay on her port side. She had obviously hit stern first, and hard. One blade was snapped off the propeller, and the lower rudder fin was smashed. The whole stern might have been knocked off true; it was hard to tell in the low visibility.
“Moving forward slowly,” he said, adjusting the controls. Behind him an ensign and a senior petty officer were monitoring instruments and preparing to deploy the manipulator arm, attached before they sailed, which carried a television camera and floodlights. These gave them a slightly wider field of view than the navigation ports permitted. The DSRV crept forward at one knot. Visibility was under twenty yards, despite the million candles of illumination from the bow lights.
The sea floor at this point was a treacherous slope of alluvial silt dotted with boulders. It appeared that the only thing that had prevented the Alfa from sliding farther down was her sail, driven like a wedge into the bottom.
“Holy gawd!” The petty officer saw it first. There was a crack in the Alfa’s hull — or was there?
“Reactor accident,” Ames said, his voice detached and clinical. “Something burned through the hull. Lord, and that’s titanium! Burned right through, from the inside out. There’s another one, two burn-throughs. This one’s bigger, looks like a good yard across. No mystery what killed her, guys. That’s two compartments open to the sea.” Ames looked over to the depth gauge: 1,880 feet. “Getting all this on tape?”
“Aye, Skipper,” the electrician first class answered. “Crummy way to die. Poor bastards.”
“Yeah, depending on what they were up to.” Ames maneuvered the Avalon around the Alfa’s bow, working the directional propeller carefully and adjusting trim to cruise down the other side, actually the top of the dead sub. “See any evidence of a hull fracture?”
“No,” the ensign answered, “just the two burn-throughs. I wonder what went wrong?”
“A for-real China Syndrome. It finally happened to somebody.” Ames shook his head. If there was anything the navy preached about reactors, it was safety. “Get the transducer against the hull. We’ll see if anybody’s alive in there.”
“Aye.” The electrician worked the waldo controls as Ames tried to keep the Avalon dead still. Neither task was easy. The DSRV was hovering, nearly resting on the sail. If there were survivors, they had to be in the control room or forward. There could be no life aft.
“Okay, I got contact.”
All three men listened intently, hoping for something. Their job was search and rescue, and as submariners themselves they took it seriously.
“Maybe they’re asleep.” The ensign switched on the locator sonar. The high-frequency waves resonated through both vessels. It was a sound fit to wake the dead, but there was no response. The air supply in the Politovskiy had run out a day before.
“That’s that,” Ames said quietly. He maneuvered upward as the electrician rigged in the manipulator arm, looking for a spot to drop a sonar transponder. They would be back again when the topside weather was better. The navy would not pass up this chance to inspect an Alfa, and the Glomar Explorer was sitting unused somewhere on the West Coast. Would she be activated? Ames would not bet against that.
“Avalon, Avalon, this is Scamp — “ the voice on the gertrude was distorted but readable, “ — return at once. Acknowledge.”
“Scamp, this is Avalon. On the way.”
The Scamp had just received an ELF message and gone briefly to periscope depth for a FLASH operational order. “PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO 33N 75W.” The message didn’t say why.
CIA Headquarters
“CARDINAL is still with us,” Moore told Ritter. “Thank God for that.” Ritter sat down.
“There’s a signal en route. This time he didn’t try to kill himself getting it to us. Maybe being in the hospital scared him a little. I’m extending another offer to extract him.”
“Again?”
“Bob, we have to make the offer.”
“I know. I had one sent myself a few years back, you know. The old bastard just doesn’t want to quit. You know how it goes, some people thrive on the action. Or maybe he hasn’t worked out his rage yet… I just got a call from Senator Donaldson.” Donaldson was the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Oh?”
“He wants to know what we know about what’s going on. He doesn’t buy the cover story about a rescue mission, and thinks we know something different.”
Judge Moore leaned back. “I wonder who planted that idea in his head?”
“Yeah. I have a little idea we might try. I think it’s time, and this is a dandy opportunity.”
The two senior executives discussed this for an hour. Before Ritter left for the Hill, they cleared it with the president.
Washington, B.C.
Donaldson kept Ritter waiting in his outer office for fifteen minutes while he read the paper. He wanted Ritter to know his place. Some of the DDO’s remarks about leaks from the Hill had touched a sore spot with the senator from Connecticut, and it was important for appointed and civil service officials to understand the difference between themselves and the elected representatives of the people.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Ritter.” Donaldson did not rise, nor did he offer to shake hands.
“Quite all right, sir. Took the chance to read a magazine. Don’t get to do that much, what with the schedule I work.” They fenced with each other from the first moment.
“So, what are the Soviets up to?”
“Senator, before I address that subject, I must say this: I had to clear this meeting with the president. This information is for you alone, no one else may hear it, sir. No one. That comes from the White House.”
“There are other men on my committee, Mr. Ritter.”
“Sir, if I do not have your word, as a gentleman,” Ritter added with a smile, “I will not reveal this information. Those are my orders. I work for the executive branch, Senator. I take my orders from the president.” Ritter hoped his recording device was getting all of this.
“Agreed,” Donaldson said reluctantly. He was angry because of the foolish restrictions, but pleased that he was getting to hear this. “Go on.”
“Frankly, sir, we’re not sure exactly what’s going on,” Ritter said.
“Oh, so you’ve sworn me to secrecy so that I can’t tell anyone that, again, the CIA doesn’t know what the hell is going on?”
“I said we don’t know exactly what’s happening. We do know a few things. Our information comes mainly from the Israelis, and some from the French. From both channels we have learned that something has gone very wrong with the Soviet Navy.”
“I gathered that. They’ve lost a sub.”
“At least one, but that’s not what’s going on. Someone, we think, has played a trick on the operations directorate of the Soviet Northern Fleet. I can’t say for sure, but I think it was the Poles.”
“Why the Poles?”
“I don’t know for sure that it is, but both the French and Israelis are well connected with the Poles, and the Poles have a long-standing beef with the Soviets. I do know — at least I think I know — that whatever this is did not come from a Western intelligence agency.”
“So, what’s happening?” Donaldson demanded.
“Our best guess is that someone has committed at least one forgery, possibly as many as three, all aimed at raising hell in the Soviet Navy — but whatever it was, it’s gotten far out of hand. A lot of people are working hard to cover their asses, the Israelis say. As a guess, I think they managed to alter a submarine’s operational orders, then forged a letter from her skipper threatening to fire his missiles. The amazing thing is that the Soviets went for it.” Ritter frowned. “We may have it all backwards, though. All we really know for sure is that somebody, probably the Poles, has played a fantastic dirty trick on the Russians.”
“Not us?” Donaldson asked pointedly.
“No, sir, absolutely not! If we tried something like that — even if we succeeded, which isn’t likely — they might try the same thing with us. You could start a war that way, and you know the president would never authorize it.”