“It sounds very risky.”
“No. Under the threat of our missiles, poised to deliver, we will restore the balance we once had. The nai’vete of our present leaders that somehow the U.S. has gone pacifist, that its military-industrial complex has actually given up and not made contingency plans to retain destructive weapons secretly is nothing but wishful thinking. What did one of their philosophers say? Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It is to their advantage, my friend, to see us completely disarmed while they, as you yourself have said, maintain capabilities to destroy us.”
Novskoyy looked closely at Dretzski to see if his lecture was sinking in — and being believed. More than once he had asked himself if he thought his plan would work without needing to fire a shot, and had tried to convince himself that it would. But if not, well, he would deal with that contingency when and if it happened. He was a man who had already destroyed an American submarine for what he believed in. He remembered, he had never forgotten, the incident over twenty years ago under the icecap when he had commanded the Leningrad. If necessary…
Dretzski felt it necessary at least to play devil’s advocate.
“Admiral, remember Contingency 12, the one we got from the spy Walker. If an American submarine commander comes to periscope depth and is convinced that his nation is the victim of a surprise attack — ongoing or potential — he is authorized to use his missiles. What about their forty submarine captains at sea—”
“We monitor their deployments with our trawlers and satellites. And there are not forty at sea at any one time.”
The water in the drydock was now three-quarters of the way up the sides of the Kaliningrad, and a loudspeaker crackled across the dock: “LIFTOFF FROM THE BLOCKS. THE UNIT IS WATERBORNE.” Novskoyy gripped the handrail tightly and smiled.
“Colonel, I am beginning to worry about you. Let me remind you that nuclear weapons are your responsibility. If it ever comes out that I was able to take these weapons without your knowledge, it will not be to your advantage, to say the least. If you decide to do anything so rash as to report prematurely what I have told you, I promise you, you will regret it.”
Dretzski knew the admiral was right. He was caught up in this, willingly or not. “But what if word gets out. Admiral, that the submarine fleet has departed?”
“Colonel, you know the answer to that. It is just another deployment exercise.”
“But won’t the authorities get suspicious if you don’t return in a week, at least? And it will take that long, will it not, to get your boats into position…”
“Yes, they may get suspicious. Colonel. And that is where you fit into the plan. You may not be the most popular man in the government, but it should not be too difficult for you to convince them that all is normal, routine. They will not suspect you of further endangering yourself. And in any case, once they realize, if they do, what I am doing, it will be too late. We will have the U.S. ports under siege, with the threat of destruction. What can they do in Moscow or anywhere else?”
“Still, sir, suppose Washington learns from Moscow of your deployment? Learns its real purpose. The American submarines could be waiting for you.”
“Again your job, Colonel. Your plant in the American military. Fishhook, better known as General Herman Tyler, I believe, will insist that this is an exercise, and that this is no time to show distrust of the Russians, who have been so cooperative…”
“Fishhook? But, Admiral, that would put him in danger of blowing his cover. The KGB placed him in the U.S. Air Force nearly thirty-five years ago. It seems he is a brilliant officer but a mediocre agent… stubborn and argumentative. At SAC headquarters he never produced the target list he had been put in place to provide. Eventually we even considered removing him, but decided, flawed as he was, to keep him on as a contingency. It had been a mistake, I believe. He became a general, and then incredibly was named as the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and a year later Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. An overwhelming and unexpected intelligence victory, you might say. But not so. If word ever leaked out that the Americans had a Russian penetration agent so high in their government they would clean house like never before, become once again paranoid as they were in the Fifties. We’ve pretty much left Fishhook alone ever since he became a general officer.”
“Nonetheless, Colonel, given his high station, he should easily convince his leaders that this deployment is an exercise. Remember, the Americans themselves conducted an exercise such as this will seem in 1984. And remember that first we thought it was a preemptive strike and then realized it was a drill. They will react the same way now.”
Dretzski did not like it but realized there was little more he could say in opposition, except to ask the admiral how he planned to give instructions to his fleet once deployed. The answer, as he suspected, was that the molniya, the “gocode,” would be issued by the admiral from the Kaliningrad.
Below them, the massive caisson door at the seaward end of the drydock was being pulled open by a tugboat now that the level of water in the dock matched the level in the channel. Soon the giant ship would be able to be towed out of the dock to a waiting pier.
“That is how we avoid detection,” the admiral went on. “I will take this ship north to the polar icecap while my fleet heads to the Atlantic. There I will be invisible, hiding a quiet submarine among the noise of the shifting and creaking ice. I will remain undisturbed and untouchable. The Kaliningrad is a fortress flagship. When it is time, I will surface through the ice and transmit my messages to Washington and Moscow. And, if it becomes necessary, I will send the molniya.”
Tugboats now began to pull the Kaliningrad out of the dock.
Novskoyy held out his hand to Dretzski, who ignored it.
“I don’t like this. Admiral. It is terribly risky—”
Novskoyy dropped his hand and nodded gravely.
“Of course, you are right, Ivan Ivanovich. But it is all that has been left to us. Come, I will walk you to your car.”
As Dretzski followed Novskoyy to the security building, he took one last look at the gigantic Kaliningrad being towed out of the dock to the deep water channel beyond. At that moment he hated the ship, and the man who would command her. And what of himself, of Colonel Ivan Ivanovich Dretzski? How did he feel about him…?
CHAPTER 3
Directly astern of the port side of the Devilfish’s control room, in the centerline passageway of the upper deck of the operations compartment, Pacino sat in his stateroom facing a fold-down desk and a stack of paperwork — shovelling the currency of the Navy’s overweight bureaucracy being the price Pacino had to pay for operating their prize possession, the Devilfish. He had been up most of the night chasing the Allentown, and now the combination of paperwork and the ship’s gentle side-to-side motion was making him drowsy. He had called for coffee and had just taken his first sip when the bridge speaker-box hissed and crackled to life.
“CAPTAIN, OFF’SA’DECK, SIR.”
Pacino flipped a toggle switch and spoke into the communication console between his desk and a table at the opposite wall.
“Captain.”
“CAPTAIN, OFF’SA’DECK, SIR. RADIO REPORTS RECEIVING AN IMMEDIATE MESSAGE FROM COMSUBLANT, SIR. IT’S MARKED PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING OFFICER.”