“When Henderson was an assistant editor of the Harvard Crimson, in 1970, he was sent to Kent State to do a piece on the shooting. You remember, the ‘Days of Rage’ thing after the Cambodian incursion and that awful screw-up with the national guard. I was in on that, too, as luck would have it. Evidently it turned Henderson’s stomach. Understandable. But not his reaction. When he graduated and joined your staff he started talking with his old activist friends about his job. This led to a contract from the Russians, and they asked for some information. That was during the Christmas bombing — he really didn’t like that. He delivered. It was low-level stuff at first, nothing they couldn’t have gotten a few days later from the Post. That’s how it works. They offered the hook, and he nibbled at it. A few years later, of course, they struck the hook nice and hard and he couldn’t get away. We all know how the game works.
“Yesterday we planted a tape recorder in his taxi. You’d be amazed how easy it was. Agents get lazy, too, just like the rest of us. To make a long story short, we have you on tape promising not to reveal the information to anyone, and we have Henderson here spilling that data not three hours later to a known KGB agent, also on tape. You have violated no laws, Senator, but Mr. Henderson has. He was arrested at nine last night. The charge is espionage, and we have the evidence to make it stick.”
“I had no knowledge whatever of this,” Donaldson said.
“We hadn’t the slightest thought that you might,” Ritter said.
Donaldson faced his aide. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Henderson didn’t say anything. He thought about saying how sorry he was, but how to explain his emotions? The dirty feeling of being an agent for a foreign power, juxtaposed with the thrill of fooling a whole legion of government spooks. When he was caught these emotions changed to fear at what would happen to him, and relief that it was all over.
“Mr. Henderson has agreed to work for us,” Jacobs said helpfully. “As soon as you leave the Senate, that is.”
“What does that mean?” Donaldson asked.
“You’ve been in the Senate, what? Thirteen years, isn’t it? You were originally appointed to fill out an unexpired term, if memory serves,” Moore said.
“You might try asking my reaction to blackmail,” the senator observed.
“Blackmail?” Moore held his hands out. “Good Lord, Senator, Director Jacobs has already told you that you have broken no laws, and you have my word that the CJA will not leak a word of this. Now, whether or not the Justice Department decides to prosecute Mr. Henderson is not in our hands. ‘Senate Aide Convicted of Treason: Senator Donaldson Professes No Knowledge of Aide’s Action.’“
Jacobs went on, “Senator, the University of Connecticut has offered you the chair in their school of government for some years now. Why not take it?”
“Or Henderson goes to prison. You put that on my conscience?”
“Obviously he cannot go on working for you, and it should be equally obvious that if he is fired after so many years of exemplary service in your office, it will be noticed. If, on the other hand, you decide to leave public life, it would not be too surprising if he were not able to get a job of equivalent stature with another senator. So, he will get a nice job in the General Accounting Office, where he will still have access to all sorts of secrets. Only from now on,” Ritter said, “we decide which secrets he passes along.”
“No statute of limitations on espionage,” Jacobs pointed out.
“If the Soviets find out,” Donaldson said, and stopped. He didn’t really care, did he? Not about Henderson, not about the fictitious Russian. He had an image to save, losses to cut.
“You win, Judge.”
“I thought you’d see it our way. I’ll tell the president. Thanks for coming in, Senator. Mr. Henderson will be a little late to the office this morning. Don’t feel too badly about him, Senator. If he plays ball with us, in a few years we might let him off the hook. It’s happened before, but he’ll have to earn it. Good morning, sir.”
Henderson would play along. His alternative was life in a maximum security penitentiary. After listening to the tape of his conversation in the cab, he’d made his confession in front of a court stenographer and a television camera.
The Pigeon
The ride to the Pigeon had been mercifully uneventful. The catamaran-hull rescue ship had a small helicopter platform aft, and the Royal Navy helicopter had hovered two feet above it, allowing Ryan and Williams to jump down. They were taken immediately to the bridge as the helicopter buzzed back northeast to her home.
“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” the captain said agreeably. “Washington says you have orders for me. Coffee?”
“Do you have tea?” Williams asked.
“We can probably find some.”
“Let’s go someplace we can talk in private,” Ryan said.
The Dallas
The Dallas was now in on the plan. Alerted by another ELF transmission, Mancuso had brought her to antenna depth briefly during the night. The lengthy EYES ONLY message had been decrypted by hand in his cabin. Decryption was not Mancuso’s strong point. It took him an hour as Chambers conned the Dallas back to trail her contact. A crewman passing the captain’s cabin heard a muted damn through the door. When Mancuso reappeared, his mouth couldn’t keep from twitching into a smile. He was not a good card player either.
The Pigeon
The Pigeon was one of the navy’s two modern submarine rescue ships designed to locate and reach a sunken nuclear sub quickly enough to save her crew. She was outfitted with a variety of sophisticated equipment, chief among them the DSRV. This vessel, the Mystic, was hanging on its rack between the Pigeon’s twin catamaran hulls. There was also a 3-d sonar operating at low power, mainly as a beacon, while the Pigeon cruised in slow circles a few miles south of the Scamp and Ethan Allen. Two Perry-class frigates were twenty miles north, operating in conjunction with three Orions to sanitize the area.
“Pigeon, this is Dallas, radio check, over.”
“Dallas, this is Pigeon. Read you loud and clear, over,” the rescue ship’s captain replied on the secure radio channel.
“The package is here. Out.”
“Captain, on Invincible we had an officer send the message with a blinker light. Can you handle the blinker light?” Ryan asked.
“To be part of this? Are you kidding?”
The plan was simple enough, just a little too cute. It was clear that the Red October wanted to defect. It was even possible that everyone aboard wanted to come over — but hardly likely. They were going to get everyone off the Red October who might want to return to Russia, then pretend to blow up the ship with one of the powerful scuttling charges Russian ships are known to carry. The remaining crewmen would then take their boat northwest into Pamlico Sound to wait for the Soviet fleet to return home, sure that the Red October had been sunk and with the crew to prove it. What could possibly go wrong? A thousand things.
The Red October
Ramius looked through his periscope. The only ship in view was the USS Pigeon, though his ESM antenna reported surface radar activity to the north, a pair of frigates standing guard over the horizon. So, this was the plan. He watched the blinker light, translating the message in his mind.
Norfolk Naval Medical Center
“Thanks for coming down, Doc.” The intelligence officer had taken over the office of assistant hospital administrator. “I understand our patient woke up.”
“About an hour ago,” Tait confirmed. “He was conscious for about twenty minutes. He’s asleep now.”
“Does that mean he’ll make it?”
“It’s a positive sign. He was reasonably coherent, so there’s no evident brain damage. I was a little worried about that. I’d have to say the odds are in his favor now, but these hypothermia cases have a way of souring on you in a hurry. He’s a sick kid, that hasn’t changed.” Tait paused. “I have a question for you, Commander: Why aren’t the Russians happy?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Kind of hard to miss. Besides, Jamie found a doctor on staff who understands Russian, and we have him attending the case.”
“Why didn’t you let me know about that?”
“The Russians don’t know either. That was a medical judgment, Commander. Having a physician around who speaks the patient’s language is simply good medical practice.” Tait smiled, pleased with himself for having thought up his own intelligence ploy while at the same time adhering to proper medical ethics and naval regulations. He took a file card from his pocket. “Anyway, the patient’s name is Andre Katyskin. He’s a cook, like we thought, from Leningrad. The name of his ship was the Politovskiy.”