The guest was Captain Sergoff, his chief of staff, who was part of the family, in Anna’s opinion. He’d been with Danilov much too long to be considered a guest anymore. While he was simply called Sergoff by the admiral and others senior to him, she knew he had a first name, and it was one that appealed to her — Pietr. Danilov would look up with surprise every time Anna used the man’s first name.
Captain Sergoff had no family. He was an only child whose parents had died in the last of Stalin’s purges. Sergoff had been lucky at that early stage in his life, for his grandparents had survived the purge and raised him. Sent off to a naval school at an early age, he knew no other life but the service and he had never been married. Abe Danilov recognized his military talents at an early stage and Anna Danilov was the one to recognize his loneliness, treating him more like a son. Even in the final stages of her illness, she often asked her husband to invite Pietr Sergoff home. His tall, blond appearance was almost patrician in comparison to her husband’s compactness.
“No, thank you, I think not,” she replied when Sergoff extended a platter to her politely. “I had too much at lunch,” she lied. Anna Danilov rarely ate, and was usually sick when she did partake of food.
Danilov’s eyes clouded over as she continued her small talk with Sergoff. Discussion around the ministry that day had been about the imminent departure of a hunter/killer group of submarines for duty in the Arctic. He knew they would not be leaving immediately, for he would be their commander, but he dreaded the approaching day, for he feared leaving Anna. Staff members came to him often to ask if they would be involved since rumors surfaced or changed each day. He would smile and say that if anything were about to happen, he knew nothing about it. The latter was true — nothing was definite. But something would break soon. That was for sure.
Now Sergoff turned from his conversation with Anna Danilov. “Isn’t that correct, sir? The Americans seem to be cooperating with us. There’s no sign of any of their ships moving northward.”
“I think for once,” he replied, smiling at his wife, “that you can believe everything you read in the papers. There is no immediate threat. The negotiations are continuing briskly.” But Danilov was one of the few who knew exactly what was taking place. He was aware that the armament being withdrawn from near the Norwegian border was taking a circuitous path back toward Murmansk, and he also knew that the original orders to the American submarine squadrons had not actually been revoked. He had been in this business long enough to realize that neither side really could anticipate what would happen over the next month or so. It was not so much the firm plans that brought nations to the brink, but the ones that seemed minor at the time.
Their small talk continued until it became obvious that Anna was growing tired. Then Sergoff volunteered, as he often did, to put some music on the record player. Anna Danilov loved the ballet and the opera. She had been a tireless patron during their years in Moscow, and now she asked Sergoff to pick something for her. When the music began, her face lit up. He had remembered her favorite Tchaikovsky ballet.
Even the admiral smiled to himself as he helped her to the sofa. His chief of staff was as invaluable to his wife as he was to his admiral. It was strange how relationships developed. If only he could depend on Sergoff to help Anna when it came time to leave for the base at Polyarnyy.
But that would not be the case because he desperately needed Sergoff. Perhaps, with a stroke of luck, there would be a meeting of the minds and he would not have to leave her. Yet he doubted that more each day. The intelligence reports from the American Pacific Coast indicated that the U.S. was preparing to release that submarine that had been building for years. And their Admiral Reed was known to be involved. He was to the Americans what Danilov was to his own navy. It became increasingly difficult to enjoy the music and Anna’s pleasure in it as the implications of Reed’s participation coursed through his mind.
For a few moments, with Anna and Sergoff engrossed in their music, Danilov’s inner thoughts completely masked Tchaikovsky. Reed — Rear Admiral Andrew Reed—the foreign flavor of the syllables echoed back and forth across his mind, yet there was a familiar ring to them also. He knew the name as well as his own. If Reed had been born in Russia, and Abe Danilov in America, would they have assumed each other’s bodies? Each other’s position in life? Each other’s…?
There were so many similarities. While Danilov was older and therefore slightly more senior in their respective navies, their careers had followed remarkably similar patterns, Both had been involved in the early stages of nuclear propulsion; each had worked with the designers of new classes; each had commanded the first of a class. And, the Russian concluded, they were both simple men… family men… they had been loyal to their wives. He respected that in a man.
Danilov knew all about the American. He’d studied Reed’s career folder often, a standard procedure when operating in an area where your opposite could be expected to appear, Abe Danilov was sure they had played cat-and-mouse games — once with their own submarines in the North Atlantic, later when they were squadron commanders evaluating their own commanding officers in the Pacific. The Russian admiral kept close track of his American encounters — especially with this Reed for some reason — and he hoped that his opposite would agree with him on the score: there had been no winners on either occasion.
A sense of respect had evolved from their brief competition. Often, when the hierarchy in the Kremlin was boasting of the superiority of their submariners, Danilov hoped he would never have to face Admiral Reed. It wasn’t fear of the other man by any means; it would be the contrary — the challenge of a lifetime! But deep inside the burly, gruff facade that was Abe Danilov, there was also a man who did not want to take the life of one who could almost be his brother… nor did he want to hurt the family that must have been as beautiful as his own.
Fear often has a momentous influence on decisions. Among most people in leadership positions, it is not the gut-wrenching fear of failure or death. It is the fear of the unknown, or, more aptly, the fear of failing to challenge the unknown.
In Washington it was accepted that Soviet ballistic missile submarines lurked under the arctic icecap waiting for a signal all hoped might never come. It was known that the Russian threat was there and that they could be located by American attack submarines given enough time. Instead, it was the unknown that created a rising anxiety within the Washington power structure — the Soviet threat concerning an American warship crossing that arbitrary line, the Arctic Circle. Would the Kremlin enforce their threat, especially now that they were going through the motions of removing their prepositioned materiel on the Norwegian border? Or, presented with the challenge, would they back down, considering the retaliation an attack on an innocent ship might bring?
The Kremlin decision makers found themselves faced with the same gnawing concerns. They expected American submarines to seek out their missile boats under the icepack. Each country had been attempting to ferret out the other’s missile threat since the game began twenty-five years before. Their greatest fear had been that the U.S. would send a ship — just one lone ship — on a mission beyond the Arctic Circle to test their seriousness. To back down would be to admit defeat on a major issue they themselves had created. And the submarine building on the Washington coast was almost certainly nearing completion. The power of the weapon wasn’t nearly as much a concern as how it might be utilized. All weapons had eventually been countered or matched in the history of war, but the method of employing it was the single unknown that carried the greatest threat. They knew that Washington had hurried its completion once the Kremlin determined to solidify its arctic bastion.