“We also understand that the payload was a … Topaz Four,” the President said, giving away a secret and possibly jeopardizing a source or two.
Unruh flinched.
Stebbins cleared his throat.
“Was it?” the Russian asked. “I had not inquired.”
Unruh did not like the way this was going.
“The reason Iʼm calling, we’d like to know something about the reactor. Maybe we can be helpful in the recovery.”
“I believe, Mr. President, that we can take care of it ourselves.”
“But… ”
“Thank you for your concern.”
The speakers in the ceiling buzzed a dial tone.
Chapter Four
Janos Sodur, a lieutenant colonel, was the junior officer in the room, but he was the loudest, Dmitri Oberstev thought.
The next loudest, his volume squelched by the frog in his throat, was Vladimir Yevgeni, member of the Parliament and protector of aerospace programs, morality, and history.
If not the loudest, Yevgeni was at least the most persuasive.
He had just persuaded the President to, as the Americans termed it, stonewall the President of the United States.
Oberstev was very tired. He had been up most of the night, and the events of the day were not the kind that made his life easier. He had tried to sleep on Yevgeni’s comfortable Ilyushin 11–76 on the flight to Sheremetevo Airport, but Sodur’s incessant conjecture for Yevgeni’s benefit had denied him that.
They were in a borrowed minister’s office in the Council of Ministersʼ Building inside the Kremlin walls, having left their initial meeting in a conference room when the telephone call from the United States was announced. Almost everyone with sufficient rank had trailed after the President. Sodur did not have sufficient rank, but he had an adequate supply of both naïveté and gall.
Oberstev stood by a corner window, listening to the half-dozen conversations taking place. He gazed upward at the high ceiling. One floor up, on the fourth, Lenin’s apartment and study were preserved for visitors, of which there were none. Outside the windows, a light snow was falling, beginning to coat the ground between the Ministersʼ Building and the tall structure next to it, the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet. From the corner office, Oberstev had a view of the Senate Tower in the wall. On the other side of it was the Lenin Mausoleum, facing Red Square.
Under the weak light of day, the gold and olive and silver onion-shaped domes glistened with the moisture of melting snow. Oberstev was acutely aware that all around him was the work of artists and architects who had flourished as early as the 11th century. The building in which he stood, uncomfortable in the over-heated space, had been built in the 18th century. While he appreciated the history and the accomplishments, it seemed incongruous for him to be there. He was, after all, driving headlong into the 21st century, shaping its history. A ten-century span, a thousand years. He wanted to be the man who completed the massive Red Star space station. If possible, he wanted to be the man who initiated the first manned expedition to Mars.
Besides the President, Yevgeni and Janos Sodur, there were two national parliament members, six generals and two admirals crowding the room. A delegation of two from the Russian parliament had also infiltrated. Oberstev was beginning to smell them.
He leaned back against the windowsill, removed his glasses, and polished the thick lenses with a linen handkerchief.
Sodur was reiterating for the generals his conviction that the disaster was the result of sabotage. Not everyone seemed to agree with Yevgeni’s aide, but they could agree on one thing — it was a disaster.
“And on the first day of the celebration,” Yevgeni lamented, without mentioning that it was the wrong celebration for him.
“The Westerners infiltrate everywhere,” Sodur told him. “All it takes is a screwdriver left in the wrong place. A bolt partially removed. A…”
“The initial indication,” Oberstev interrupted, “is that the primary motor control computer malfunctioned.”
He was not about to reveal to this group, and at this moment, that human logic — his own — had overridden that of the computer.
“Exactly!” shouted Sodur. “A magnet! The agent had only to drop a magnet in the right location.”
“You are certain that foreign agents are in place at Plesetsk?” Yevgeni asked. “The security…?”
“I am certain,” Sodur said very soberly.
Oberstev shook his head. They always looked for someone on whom to place the blame, looking backward, when the moment called for looking forward.
The President apparently thought the same way. He lifted his hand to quiet the room, then said, “The causes may be examined at a later date. The consequences are of immediate concern. Chairman Yevgeni, you convinced me to tell the Americans that we can solve our own problem. How do you suggest we go about it?”
The old man turned to face the younger President. “The navy has recovery apparatus. Send them to it.”
It was always that simple, in the eyes of the blind.
Most of the eyes in the room focused on Adm. Grigori Orlov, who was commander in chief of the Commonwealth navy. A forty-year veteran, Orlov was heavyset as a result of his skeletal structure, but appeared trim in his uniform. He had large bags beneath his brown eyes, giving him a canine appearance. Senior Commonwealth military leaders who had survived imposed retirement or outright ouster were a strong presence in the balance of national power, and Orlov’s soft-spoken voice carried the weight of that authority.
“We do not yet know the location of the rocket,” Admiral Orlov said.
“But we do!” Yevgeni argued, more loudly and more insistently than was necessary.
“We know the coordinates of the impact,” Orlov countered. “We do not know what occurred after impact.”
Oberstev nodded his agreement and said, “Our last telemetry readings suggest that the vehicle was not tumbling and was still in its original configuration. That is to say, that the payload module, the primary rocket, and the booster rockets had not separated. All propulsion systems had ceased operation long before, but the speed at impact was four hundred and sixty kilometers-per-hour. It may have broken up upon contact with the ocean surface, or it may have entered the water cleanly. We do not know.”
“But you know where it struck,” Yevgeni insisted.
“After impact, it could have traveled a great distance under the surface, and in practically any direction,” the admiral said. “I suspect it could have traveled laterally up to five kilometers. In an area to be searched, that is more than fifteen square kilometers,” Orlov said.
“Impossible,” Yevgeni said.
“I am afraid that Admiral Orlov is quite right, Chairman Yevgeni,” Oberstev said. “That region of the Pacific Ocean is over five thousand meters deep. Almost six thousand, if I am not mistaken.”
“You are not,” Orlov said.
“That will present recovery problems, I suspect,” Oberstev said.
“Indeed,” the admiral told the group. “Our submarines cannot, of course, dive that deeply. The ocean bottom is extremely rugged, possibly preventing our ever locating the wreckage. At present, the only deep-diving submersible we have in the Pacific is at Vladivostok, undergoing repair.”
“We should have let the Americans help us,” Dmitri Oberstev said.
“I agree,” General Druzhinin, an air force deputy commander in chief and commander of the Rocket Forces, Oberstev’s superior, said.
“Never!” Yevgeni said.
Pod-Palcovnik Janos Sodur grinned his agreement. His teeth were stained yellow from his smoking.