A howling storm hit us three-quarters of the way across the Sea of Japan. Forty-foot waves tossed the surface-running sub around like a beer can in a washing machine. The heads became awash with vomit and we were forced to strap ourselves into our racks. Several crew members sustained broken ribs or collarbones as they caromed down passageways or attempted to climb to the sub’s conning tower. The waves picked the boat up with perverse relish, hesitated, and then abruptly dropped it into the raging sea.
On one occasion, several hundred gallons of seawater cascaded down an open hatch. A lookout had opened the hatch for his watch relief. The relieving crewman was knocked senseless and the seawater short-circuited a number of powerlines. Fortunately, the seawater did not get into the sub’s batteries. Seawater and batteries combine to generate deadly chlorine gas.
The storm had lasted for twenty-four hours and left everyone hungry and exhausted.
I was alone in the submarine’s wardroom when Dravit and Chamonix filed in.
“Skipper, I think we’d better take a second look at this operation,” Dravit opened.
His color was up. Chamonix wore a similar look of intensity. A confrontation.
I was seated. They stood over me. Dravit’s cast clunked against the bench seat. I had been expecting something like this. Now the two of them had me cornered.
“We’re out on a limb already and I can hear some bugger making little chopping noises behind us,” he said through clenched teeth.
I searched their faces for a hint of indecision or inconsistency, and found none.
“Mister Frazer,” Chamonix added in even tones, “there has been a serious pattern of acts, of, how do you say—it is the same word in English—sabotage. We cannot disregard these acts. To endure difficulties, this is admirable. To ignore clear signs of treachery, that is foolhardy.”
Dravit drummed his fingers on the table softly, unconsciously.
“You mean you want me to pull the plug?” Not quite the right expression to use aboard a submarine, I thought as I said it.
They hesitated. They had come this far and now they stood before me awkward and flat-footed. None of us had wanted to be the first to say it.
“We’re compromised,” Dravit pleaded.
“Maybe. I don’t think so.”
The Frenchman looked down at his shower shoes. Dravit slumped into the bench seat across from me. Then he pulled himself up to a more adversarial posture.
It was disquieting being at odds with your second and third in command. Both Dravit and Chamonix were seasoned combatants with a wide range of field experience between them.
Dravit countered, “Well, then, who do you ken is responsible and what are you going to do about it?”
“Anyone. Everyone. Nothing for now.”
They gave each other confirming looks.
“The pattern seems pretty subtle,” I continued. “The camera, the Japanese police, your accident, the regulators… Why do they keep trying to spring the trap before they can get all of us? Why not wait and stop us once and for all?”
Chamonix cocked an eyebrow. “The right charge in Henry’s ski booby trap could have taken us all out?”
“Yes, including the turncoat,” Dravit interrupted.
“What can he do in Siberia that won’t take him ‘out,’ along with us?”
“Maybe he wants to be in Siberia. Maybe the people he’s working with are there,” Dravit persisted.
That was a possibility I most dreaded.
“Why, then, take the trouble to tamper with the regulators?”
Chamonix had withdrawn enigmatically from the conversation. Evidence of his fine mind burned through occasionally, but too often his thoughts lay concealed behind a dark cloud.
“We’re talking about nine men.”
“I know.”
“All we need is one bloke who can make contact with the wrong people at the right time and you’re bloody well through.”
“I’ve considered that.”
“You run the chance of jeopardizing the sub’s crew, too. That’s another eighty men to figure into the balance.”
“Yes, they’re at risk.”
His face was reddening. “We are open to retribution.”
“We would be anyway.”
Knockout punches were for the movies. Real fights, Dravit knew, were won by steadily pounding your opponent into rubber-legged submission.
“If they capture a single mucking one of you, they won’t be gentle like my maiden aunt. Once they get out of you what they want to know, Vyshinsky will be as good as dead.”
“He’s nearly as good as dead already.”
“Righto, so bloody well don’t go!” He brought both fists down onto the table.
“Enough of this feels right. We’re going. You are right, something’s wrong, but the odds are as good as they’ll ever get.” I had unconsciously laid emphasis on “we’re going.” He wasn’t and that took some weight from his arguments. “Who’s ever going to expect an operation as audacious as this?”
Chamonix looked at Dravit and shrugged. The Englishman opened his mouth, then shut it. Each of them had enough military time to have run into situations like this before. Instances where the commanding officer and his senior people did not agree. There was no point in arguing further.
“The matter is closed,” I pronounced. I, too, had experience, and more in positions of ultimate responsibility. Consensus was always desirable, but I had learned to trust my instincts. Kurganov had hired one man to make the final decisions. Finality was the nature of the work I did, and of the inescapable responsibility I had assumed.
Frazer, were you right this time? At what point would they stop following you?
“Remember one thing: only you, Henry, and I know the complete plan. Our turncoat isn’t sure how hard he has to be trying. I’m going to settle that little question. We’ll brief tonight on the entire mission. Lay out the warning order and everything. We’ll begin phase planning later tomorrow.”
The klaxon sounded and there was a rush of feet in the passageway. The crew were rushing to their diving stations.
That night the troop compartment was cramped and humid.
“Bitte, will this be an aerobic session for us, you know, as schussing moving targets? Or is it to be a learning opportunity, say, for us to discover how many pieces of equipment can be cleverly rigged to malfunction, or perhaps blow up,” Lutjens kicked off with a sweet smile, “sir?” He turned to the others with a hand gesture that invited similar challenges.
The high-living German was apparently a master of the military fine art of the border-line insubordinate question. Always end it with “sir.”
I saw Chief Puckins bridle. If I was any judge, Puckins as the senior enlisted SEAL would soon be giving Lutjens a verbal blowtorching in private.
Dravit and I gave the preliminary briefing. Assignments would be made shortly and each man would be preparing a briefing to be given to the group of his portion of the mission prior to execution. Using a dozen maps, diagrams, and photographs taped to the top of an upturned Ping-Pong table, we took two and a half hours to outline the key points. More would follow, this was just the beginning. Only one or two showed any surprise. By now they had a general sense of the risks, even without knowing the countries involved.
“We will be putting our kayaks ashore, that’s the program. I believe we can pull this off. Anyone who wants to back out now, can. Just remember that if you back out, you don’t get a dime, and you won’t be going anywhere beyond this submarine.