The American skipper tried to smile. “We detected you off the coast of Iceland. You were luckier than you imagine. If we’d sailed from England on schedule, we’d have been fifteen miles closer in shore, and we would have had you cold. Sorry, Captain, but our sonars and sonar operators are very good. You can meet the man who first tracked you later. He’s working with your man Bugayev at the moment.”
“Starshina,” Borodin said.
“Not an officer?” Ramius asked.
“No, just a very good operator,” Mancuso said, surprised. Why would anyone want an officer to stand watch on sonar gear?
The cook came back in. His idea of the standard U.S. Navy breakfast was a large platter with a slab of ham, two eggs over easy, a pile of hash browns, and four slices of toast, with a container of apple jelly.
“Let me know if you want more, sir,” the cook said.
“This is a normal breakfast?” Ramius asked Mancuso.
“Nothing unusual about it. I prefer waffles myself. Americans eat big breakfasts.” Ramius was already attacking his. After two days without a normal meal and all the blood loss from his leg wound, his body was screaming for food.
‘Tell me, Ryan,” Borodin was lighting a cigarette, “what is it in America that we will find most amazing?”
Jack motioned to the captain’s plate. “Food stores.”
“Food stores?” Mancuso asked.
“While I was sitting on Invincible I read over a CIA report on people who come over to our side.” Ryan didn’t want to say defectors. Somehow the word sounded demeaning. “Supposedly the first thing that surprises people, people from your part of the world, is going through a supermarket.”
“Tell me about them,” Borodin ordered.
“A building about the size of a football field — well, maybe a little smaller than that. You go in the front door and get a shopping cart. The fresh fruits and vegetables are on the right, and you gradually work your way left through the other departments. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid.”
“You say fresh fruits and vegetables? What about now, in winter?”
“What about winter?” Mancuso said. “Maybe they cost a little more, but you can always get fresh produce. That’s the one thing we miss on the boats. Our supply of fresh produce and milk only lasts us about a week.”
“And meat?” Ramius asked.
“Anything you want,” Ryan answered. “Beef, pork, lamb, turkey, chicken. American farmers are very efficient. The United States feeds itself and has plenty left over. You know that, the Soviet Union buys our grain. Hell, we pay farmers not to grow things, just to keep the surplus under control.” The four Russians were doubtful.
“What else?” Borodin asked.
“What else will surprise you? Nearly everyone has a car. Most people own their own homes. If you have money, you can buy nearly anything you want. The average family in America makes something like twenty thousand dollars a year, I guess. These officers all make more than that. The fact of the matter is that in our country if you have some brains — and all of you men do — and you are willing to work — and all of you men are — you will live a comfortable life even without any help. Besides, you can be sure that the CIA will take good care of you. We wouldn’t want anybody to complain about our hospitality.”
“And what will become of my men?” Ramius asked.
“I can’t say exactly, sir, since I’ve never been involved in this sort of thing myself. I would guess that you will be taken to a safe place to relax and unwind. People from the CIA and the navy will want to talk to you at length. That’s no surprise, right? I told you this before. A year from now you will be doing whatever you choose to do.”
“And anybody who wants to take a cruise with us is welcome to,” Mancuso added.
Ryan wondered how true this was. The navy would not want to let any of these men on a 688-class boat. It might give one of them information valuable enough to enable him to return home and keep his head.
“How does a friendly man become a CIA spy?” Borodin asked.
“I am not a spy, sir,” Ryan said again. He couldn’t blame them for not believing him. “Going through- graduate school I got to know a guy who mentioned my name to a friend of his in the CIA, Admiral James Greer. Back a few years ago I was asked to join a team of academics that was called in to check up on some of the CIA’s intelligence estimates. At the time I was happily engaged writing books on naval history. At Langley — I was there for two months during the summer — I did a paper on international terrorism. Greer liked it, and two years ago he asked me to go to work there full time. I accepted. It was a mistake,” Ryan said, not really meaning it. Or did he? “A year ago I was transferred to London to work on a joint intelligence evaluation team with the British Secret Service. My normal job is to sit at a desk and figure out the stuff that field agents send in. I got myself roped into this because I figured out what you were up to, Captain Ramius.”
“Was your father a spy?” Borodin asked.
“No, my dad was a police officer in Baltimore. He and my mother were killed in a plane crash ten years ago.”
Borodin expressed his sympathy. “And you, Captain Mancuso, what made you a sailor?”
“I wanted to be a sailor since I was a kid. My dad’s a barber. I decided on submarines at Annapolis because I thought it looked interesting.”
Ryan was watching something he had never seen before, men from two different places and two very different cultures trying to find common ground. Both sides were reaching out, seeking similarities of character and experience, building a foundation for understanding. This was more than interesting. It was touching. Ryan wondered how difficult it was for the Soviets. Probably harder than anything he had ever done — their bridges were burned. They had cast themselves away from everything they had known, trusting that what they found would be better. Ryan hoped they would succeed and make their transition from Communism to freedom. In the past two days he had come to realize what courage it took for men to defect. Facing a gun in a missile room was a small matter compared with walking away from one’s whole life. It was strange how easily Americans put on their freedoms. How difficult would it be for these men who had risked their lives to adapt to something that men like Ryan so rarely appreciated? It was people like these who had built the American Dream, and people like these who were needed to maintain it. It was odd that such men should come from the Soviet Union. Or perhaps not so odd, Ryan thought, listening to the conversation going back and forth in front of him.
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY
SUNDAY, 19 DECEMBER
The Red October
“Eight more hours,” Ryan whispered to himself. That’s what they had told him. An eight-hour run to Norfolk. He was back at the rudder diving-plane controls by his own request. Operating them was the only thing he knew how to do, and he had to do something. The October was still badly shorthanded. Nearly all of the Americans were helping out in the reactor and engine spaces aft. Only Mancuso, Ramius, and himself were in control. Bugayev, with the help of Jones, was monitoring the sonar equipment a few feet away, and the medical people were still worrying over Williams in sick bay. The cook was shuttling back and forth with sandwiches and coffee, which Ryan found disappointing, probably because he had been spoiled by Greer’s.
Ramius was half sitting on the rail that surrounded the periscope pedestal. The leg wound was not bleeding, but it had to be hurting more than the man admitted since he was letting Mancuso check the instruments and handle the navigation.
“Rudder amidships,” Mancuso ordered.
“Midships,” Ryan turned the wheel back to the right to center it, checking his rudder angle indicator. “Rudder is amidships, steady on course one-two-zero.”
Mancuso frowned at his chart, nervous at being forced to pilot the massive submarine in so cavalier a manner. “You have to be careful around here. The sandbar keeps building up from the southerly littoral drift, and they have to dredge it every few months. The storms this area’s been having can’t have helped much.” Mancuso went back to look through the periscope.
“I am told this is a dangerous area,” Ramius said.
“The graveyard of the Atlantic,” Mancuso confirmed. “A lot of ships have died along the Outer Banks. Weather and current conditions are bad enough. The Germans are supposed to have had a hell of a time here during the war. Your charts don’t show it, but there’s hundreds of wrecks spotted on the bottom.” He went back to the chart table. “Anyway, we give this place a nice wide berth, and we don’t turn north till about here.” He traced a line on the chart.