Finally, we were alone. I took a deep, shuddering breath, suddenly at a loss for words. What do you say to a man you believe has been dead for over forty years?
"It is hard for me to believe it is you," he said. "As difficult for you as it is for me, I suppose." He took the breath, and tears shone in his eyes. "You don't know how many times I thought about you ― wondered what you would be like when you grew up. When they told me two weeks ago that I would see you, it- You understand, I thought I would die here without ever knowing you or seeing your mother again. I had to believe that, had to come to terms with that, in order to survive. It wasn't that I didn't love you both, more than you'll ever know. But as long as they knew that, they had power over me." He shuddered, evidently disturbed by the memories. "And now… your mother? Did she remarry?"
"No. And I don't think she's ever given up hoping, either. She knew I was coming, and she sends her love."
He nodded. "Somehow, I believe that. Not many women would have waited that long. Talk to me, Matt. My brother ― how is he? And my parents ― they must be dead by now." Despite his words, I could hear the hope in his voice.
"Grandfather, yes. But your mother is still alive, and going strong.
It was… it was difficult for her, as it was for all of us."
He was staring through me now, seeing memories I would never share.
"Tell me more."
He was begging now, or at least as close as he would ever come to it.
I heard the naked need in his voice, saw the tears well up again. "It's been so long, and sometimes I can't tell what I remember and what I just wish was true. Talk to me, son."
Alarms went off in my head. I wanted so much to believe, to have this be the truth. Yet I had spent over half my life in the United States Navy.
At least three times a year, and more often when in sensitive security positions, caution had been hammered into me about counterintelligence specialists.
In the last few days, the Russians had already demonstrated that they knew far more than I'd thought about me personally. My family, my call sign, all the details that must be in their files.
Enough to coach an imposter?
"Tell me what you remember," I said.
Nothing changed in his face, yet it seemed to me that the tired, aging eyes were slightly more alert. Revulsion flooded me ― and at that moment I knew the truth.
But perhaps this wariness could be the result of living in Russia for forty years? As first a prisoner of war, then later a political prisoner inside this monolithic, secretive state, he would have more experience with lies, deceit, and treachery then I had ever encountered. He knew that this was no simple question from a son to a long lost father. No, it was something entirely different, something that almost broke my heart. It was a test.
"Tell me how you met Mother." It was a story I had heard many times, and one that certainly wouldn't fade easily from his memory. If he was who he claimed to be, he would have replayed that scene millions of times in the last decades. "Tell me the story." He smiled slightly and seemed to relax. "She was a friend of Sam's sister. She told you about Sam?"
I nodded. Sam had been his roommate at the Naval Academy, later a fellow aviator. Sam was shot down two years after my father, but there was no need to tell him that now.
"It was the Senior Ball. I didn't have a date ― Sam said I was too ugly to get one on my own, so he fixed me up with a family friend." He shook his head, a bemused expression on his face. "Sam really screwed that one up. His date stood him up, so he ended up taking his own sister. And I met the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life. Not that we saw many in those days, you understand. The Academy was ― well, it was the next thing to a monastery most of the time. Except for the town girls who wanted to marry a naval officer."
"The Senior Ball ― yes, Mother told me about it several times." More than several, as a matter of fact. It was a standard family childhood joke, one that we told everyone. It was something you would have known from any sort of investigation into my family, since the incident had been widely reported after you were shot down. For days, the papers were filled with human interest stories about you two, your brother, me.
The only problem with the entire tale was that it wasn't true.
My father had indeed been a senior at the Naval Academy when he met my mother. But the Senior Ball wasn't the first time, not at all.
In his day, liberty was much more restrictive for midshipmen at the Academy. During their senior year, they were free on weekends, if they did not have duty or were not restricted for a number of other reasons. My father probably had less liberty than most did. According to my uncle and my mom, he was something of a hell-raiser. He spent a fair amount of time confined to Naval Academy grounds for one infraction or another.
The weekend he met my mother, my father was supposedly restricted to his room. A Volkswagen bug had miraculously disappeared from the faculty parking lot and been reassembled in a professor's office. After a thorough investigation, my father was implicated. And restricted to base with no liberty.
Mother said he sneaked out somehow. I guess he never gave her all the details, but after my own time at Annapolis, I finally figured it out myself. Ingenious ― and a technique I don't want to pass on to future generations.
At any rate, my father was an unauthorized absentee. Over the fence, the wall, whatever you want to call it, he headed into Annapolis for a night on the town. After all, as a senior he was fast running out of chances to break Naval Academy rules.
10
The last message I'd gotten from our submarine hadn't been reassuring.
The Akula and Victor still had her pinned down, and she had made no progress in repairing her engineering casualties. As a result, she had only a small fraction of her normal electrical power available to operate the ship, and had reduced her electrical load to a bare, life-sustaining minimum. The sonar, the air purifiers, and the heat ― that was about it.
The sub's skipper was convinced that the Akula had their range, and, reading between the lines, I could see he was worried. Real worried, as bad as I'd ever heard that cool Georgia Tech grad ever get.
Still, if anyone could pull it off, it was him. There are no certainties in the delicate game of USW, but there were few people who played it better.
That had been thirty minutes ago. Since then, nothing.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have worried. After all, submarines usually maintain radio silence except for once or twice a day when they come to communications depth and query the satellite for the broadcast. So not being able to talk with him immediately, not following his evasion of the two attack submarines play by play, was nothing out of the ordinary. But couple that with an engineering casualty, and the increasing tensions ashore, and I didn't like it. Not a bit.
"But what's not to like?" Captain Smith asked me, leaning against my bulkhead in that calm, casual way he had. "Just playing the devil's advocate here, you understand. Remember, we're here for a friendship mission." He waved one hand vaguely in the air, intending to indicate the entire former Soviet Union. "Those MiGs-training opportunities. Nobody got hurt, did they? Airmanship, some good friendly competition ― that's what this is all about."
"And you buy that?" I asked, immediately regretting the sharp note in my voice. Captain Smith was nobody's fool. He knew what was going on, had played this game during the Cold War, when the stakes were so much higher.