by Tom Clancy
The Invincible
Ryan was in the Invincible’s communications room. “MAGI TO OLYMPUS,” he typed into the special encoding device the CIA had sent out with him, “PLAYED MY MANDOLIN TODAY. SOUNDED PRETTY GOOD. I’M PLANNING A LITTLE CONCERT, AT THE USUAL PLACE. EXPECT GOOD CRITICAL REVIEWS. AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS.” Ryan had laughed before at the code words he was supposed to use for this. He was laughing now, for a different reason.
The White House
“So,” Pelt observed, “Ryan expects the mission will be successful. Everything’s going according to plan, but he didn’t use the code group for certain success.”
The president leaned back comfortably. “He’s honest. Things can always go wrong. You have to admit, though, things do look good.”
“This plan the chiefs came up with is crazy, sir.”
“Perhaps, but you’ve been trying to poke a hole in it for several days now, and you haven’t succeeded. The pieces will all fall in place shortly.”
The president was being clever, Pelt saw. The man liked being clever.
The Invincible
“OLYMPUS TO MAGI. I LIKE OLD-FASHIONED MANDOLIN MUSIC. CONCERT APPROVED,” the message said.
Ryan sat back comfortably, sipping at his brandy. “Well, that’s good. I wonder what the next part of the plan is.”
“I expect that Washington will let us know. For the moment,” Admiral White said, “we’ll have to move back west to interpose ourselves between October and the Soviet fleet.”
The Avalon
Lieutenant Ames surveyed the scene through the tiny port on the Avalon’s bow. The Alfa lay on her port side. She had obviously hit stern first, and hard. One blade was snapped off the propeller, and the lower rudder fin was smashed. The whole stern might have been knocked off true; it was hard to tell in the low visibility.
“Moving forward slowly,” he said, adjusting the controls. Behind him an ensign and a senior petty officer were monitoring instruments and preparing to deploy the manipulator arm, attached before they sailed, which carried a television camera and floodlights. These gave them a slightly wider field of view than the navigation ports permitted. The DSRV crept forward at one knot. Visibility was under twenty yards, despite the million candles of illumination from the bow lights.
The sea floor at this point was a treacherous slope of alluvial silt dotted with boulders. It appeared that the only thing that had prevented the Alfa from sliding farther down was her sail, driven like a wedge into the bottom.
“Holy gawd!” The petty officer saw it first. There was a crack in the Alfa’s hull—or was there?
“Reactor accident,” Ames said, his voice detached and clinical. “Something burned through the hull. Lord, and that’s titanium! Burned right through, from the inside out. There’s another one, two burn-throughs. This one’s bigger, looks like a good yard across. No mystery what killed her, guys. That’s two compartments open to the sea.” Ames looked over to the depth gauge: 1,880 feet. “Getting all this on tape?”
“Aye, Skipper,” the electrician first class answered. “Crummy way to die. Poor bastards.”
“Yeah, depending on what they were up to.” Ames maneuvered the Avalon around the Alfa’s bow, working the directional propeller carefully and adjusting trim to cruise down the other side, actually the top of the dead sub. “See any evidence of a hull fracture?”
“No,” the ensign answered, “just the two burn-throughs. I wonder what went wrong?”
“A for-real China Syndrome. It finally happened to somebody.” Ames shook his head. If there was anything the navy preached about reactors, it was safety. “Get the transducer against the hull. We’ll see if anybody’s alive in there.”
“Aye.” The electrician worked the waldo controls as Ames tried to keep the Avalon dead still. Neither task was easy. The DSRV was hovering, nearly resting on the sail. If there were survivors, they had to be in the control room or forward. There could be no life aft.
“Okay, I got contact.”
All three men listened intently, hoping for something. Their job was search and rescue, and as submariners themselves they took it seriously.
“Maybe they’re asleep.” The ensign switched on the locater sonar. The high-frequency waves resonated through both vessels. It was a sound fit to wake the dead, but there was no response. The air supply in the Politovskiy had run out a day before.
“That’s that,” Ames said quietly. He maneuvered upward as the electrician rigged in the manipulator arm, looking for a spot to drop a sonar transponder. They would be back again when the topside weather was better. The navy would not pass up this chance to inspect an Alfa, and the Glomar Explorer was sitting unused somewhere on the West Coast. Would she be activated? Ames would not bet against that.
“Avalon, Avalon, this is Scamp—” the voice on the gertrude was distorted but readable, “—return at once. Acknowledge.”
“Scamp, this is Avalon. On the way.”
The Scamp had just received an ELF message and gone briefly to periscope depth for a FLASH operational order. “PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO 33N 75W.” The message didn’t say why.
CIA Headquarters
“CARDINAL is still with us,” Moore told Ritter.
“Thank God for that.” Ritter sat down.
“There’s a signal en route. This time he didn’t try to kill himself getting it to us. Maybe being in the hospital scared him a little. I’m extending another offer to extract him.”
“Again?”
“Bob, we have to make the offer.”
“I know. I had one sent myself a few years back, you know. The old bastard just doesn’t want to quit. You know how it goes, some people thrive on the action. Or maybe he hasn’t worked out his rage yet…I just got a call from Senator Donaldson.” Donaldson was the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.
“Oh?”
“He wants to know what we know about what’s going on. He doesn’t buy the cover story about a rescue mission, and thinks we know something different.”
Judge Moore leaned back. “I wonder who planted that idea in his head?”
“Yeah. I have a little idea we might try. I think it’s time, and this is a dandy opportunity.”
The two senior executives discussed this for an hour. Before Ritter left for the Hill, they cleared it with the president.
Washington, D.C.
Donaldson kept Ritter waiting in his outer office for fifteen minutes while he read the paper. He wanted Ritter to know his place. Some of the DDO’s remarks about leaks from the Hill had touched a sore spot with the senator from Connecticut, and it was important for appointed and civil service officials to understand the difference between themselves and the elected representatives of the people.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Ritter.” Donaldson did not rise, nor did he offer to shake hands.
“Quite all right, sir. Took the chance to read a magazine. Don’t get to do that much, what with the schedule I work.” They fenced with each other from the first moment.
“So, what are the Soviets up to?”
“Senator, before I address that subject, I must say this: I had to clear this meeting with the president. This information is for you alone, no one else may hear it, sir. No one. That comes from the White House.”
“There are other men on my committee, Mr. Ritter.”
“Sir, if I do not have your word, as a gentleman,” Ritter added with a smile, “I will not reveal this information. Those are my orders. I work for the executive branch, Senator. I take my orders from the president.” Ritter hoped his recording device was getting all of this.
“Agreed,” Donaldson said reluctantly. He was angry because of the foolish restrictions, but pleased that he was getting to hear this. “Go on.”
“Frankly, sir, we’re not sure exactly what’s going on,” Ritter said.
“Oh, so you’ve sworn me to secrecy so that I can’t tell anyone that, again, the CIA doesn’t know what the hell is going
on?”
“I said we don’t know exactly what’s happening. We do know a few things. Our information comes mainly from the Israelis, and some from the French. From both channels we have learned that something has gone very wrong with the Soviet Navy.”
“I gathered that. They’ve lost a sub.”
“At least one, but that’s not what’s going on. Someone, we think, has played a trick on the operations directorate of the Soviet Northern Fleet. I can’t say for sure, but I think it was the Poles.”
“Why the Poles?”
“I don’t know for sure that it is, but both the French and Israelis are well connected with the Poles, and the Poles have a long-standing beef with the Soviets. I do know—at least I think I know—that whatever this is did not come from a Western intelligence agency.”
“So, what’s happening?” Donaldson demanded.
“Our best guess is that someone has committed at least one forgery, possibly as many as three, all aimed at raising hell in the Soviet Navy—but whatever it was, it’s gotten far out of hand. A lot of people are working hard to cover their asses, the Israelis say. As a guess, I think they managed to alter a submarine’s operational orders, then forged a letter from her skipper threatening to fire his missiles. The amazing thing is that the Soviets went for it.” Ritter frowned. “We may have it all backwards, though. All we really know for sure is that somebody, probably the Poles, has played a fantastic dirty trick on the Russians.”
“Not us?” Donaldson asked pointedly.
“No, sir, absolutely not! If we tried something like that—even if we succeeded, which isn’t likely—they might try the same thing with us. You could start a war that way, and you know the president would never authorize it.”
“But someone at the CIA might not care what the president thinks.”
“Not in my department! It would be my head. Do you really think we could run an operation like this and then successfully conceal it? Hell, Senator, I wish we could.”
“Why the Poles, and why are they able to do it?”
“We’ve been hearing for some time about a dissident faction inside their intelligence community, one that does not especially love the Soviets. You can pick any number of reasons why. There’s the fundamental historical enmity, and the Russians seem to forget that the Poles are Polish first, Communists second. My own guess is that it’s this business with the pope, even more than the martial law thing. We know that our old friend Andropov initiated a replay of the Henry II/Becket business. The pope has given Poland a great deal of prestige, done things for the country that even Party members feel good about. Ivan went and spit on their whole country when he did that—you wonder that they’re mad? As to their ability, people seem to overlook just what a class act their intelligence service always has been. They’re the ones who made the Enigma break-through in 1939, not the Brits. They’re damned effective, and for the same reason as the Israelis. They have enemies to the east and the west. That sort of thing breeds good agents. We know for certain that they have a lot of people inside Russia, guest workers paying Narmonov off for the economic supports given to their country. We also know that a lot of Polish engineers are working in Soviet shipyards. I admit it’s funny, neither country has much of a maritime tradition, but the Poles build a lot of Soviet merchant hulls. Their yards are more efficient than the Russian ones, and lately they’ve been giving technical help, mainly in quality control, to the naval building yards.”
“So, the Polish intelligence service has played a trick on the Soviets,” Donaldson summarized. “Gorshkov is one of the guys who took a hard line on intervention, wasn’t he?”
“True, but he’s probably just a target of opportunity. The real aim of this has to be to embarrass Moscow. The fact that this operation attacks the Soviet Navy has no significance in itself. The objective is to raise hell in their senior military channels, and they all come together in Moscow. God, I wish I knew what was really happening! From the five percent we do know, this operation has to be a real masterpiece, the sort of thing legends are made of. We’re working on it, trying to find out. So are the Brits, and the French, and the Israelis—Benny Herzog of the Mossad is supposed to be going ape. The Israelis do pull this kind of trick on their neighbors, regularly. They say officially that they don’t know anything beyond what they’ve told us. Maybe so. Or maybe they gave the Poles some technical help—hard to say. It’s certain that the Soviet Navy is a strategic threat to Israel. But we need more time on that. The Israeli connection looks a little too pat at this point.”
“But you don’t know what’s happening, just the how and why.”
“Senator, it’s not that easy. Give us some time. At the moment we may not even want to know. To summarize, somebody has laid a colossal piece of disinformation on the Soviet Navy. It was probably aimed at merely shaking them up, but it has clearly gotten out of hand. How or why it happened, we do not know. You can bet, however, that whoever initiated this operation is working very hard to cover his tracks.” Ritter wanted the senator to get this right. “If the Soviets find out who did it, their reaction will be nasty—depend on it. In a few weeks we might know more. The Israelis owe us for a few things, and eventually they’ll let us in on it.”
“For a couple more F-15s and a company of tanks,” Donaldson observed.
“Cheap at the price.”
“But if we’re not involved in this, why the secrecy?”
“You gave me your word, Senator,” Ritter reminded him. “For one thing, if word leaked out, would the Soviets believe we’re not involved? Not likely! We’re trying to civilize the intelligence game. I mean, we’re still enemies, but having the various intelligence services in conflict uses up too many assets, and it’s dangerous to both sides. For another, well, if we ever do find out how all this happened, we just might want to make use of it ourselves.”
“Those reasons are contradictory.”
Ritter smiled. “The intelligence game is like that. If we find out who did this, we can use that information to our advantage. In any case, Senator, you gave me your word, and I will report that to the president on my return to Langley.”
“Very well.” Donaldson rose. The interview was at an end. “I trust you will keep us informed of future developments.”
“That’s what we have to do, sir.” Ritter stood.
“Indeed. Thank you for coming down.” They did not shake hands this time either.
Ritter walked into the hall without passing through the anteroom. He stopped to look down into the atrium of the Hart building. It reminded him of the local Hyatt. Uncharacteristically, he took the stairs instead of the elevator down to the first floor. With luck he had just settled a major score. His car was waiting for him outside, and he told the driver to head for the FBI building.
“Not a CIA operation?” Peter Henderson, the senator’s chief aide, asked.
“No, I believe him,” Donaldson said. “He’s not smart enough to pull something like that.”
“I don’t know why the president doesn’t get rid of him,” Henderson commented. “Of course, the kind of person he is, maybe it’s better that he’s incompetent.” The senator agreed.
When he returned to his office, Henderson adjusted the venetian blinds on his window, though the sun was on the other side of the building. An hour later the driver of a passing Black & White taxicab looked up at the window and made a mental note.
Henderson worked late that night. The Hart building was nearly empty with most of the senators out of town. Donaldson was there only because of personal business and to keep an eye on things. As chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, he had more duties than he would have liked at this time of year. Henderson took the elevator down to the main lobby, looking every inch the senior congressional aide—a three-piece gray suit, an expensive leather attaché case, his hair just so, and his stride jaunty as he left the building. A Black & White cab came around the corner and stopped to let out a fare. Henderson got in.
>
“Watergate,” he said. Not until the taxi had driven a few blocks did he speak again.
Henderson had a modest one-bedroom condo in the Watergate complex, an irony that he himself had considered many times. When he got to his destination he did not tip the driver. A woman got in as he walked to the main entrance. Taxis in Washington are very busy in the early evening.
“Georgetown University, please,” she said, a pretty young woman with auburn hair and an armload of books.
“Night school?” the driver asked, checking the mirror.
“Exams,” the girl said, her voice a trace uneasy. “Psych.”
“Best thing to do with exams is relax,” the driver advised.
Special Agent Hazel Loomis fumbled with her books. Her purse dropped to the floor. “Oh, damn.” She bent over to pick it up, and while doing so retrieved a miniature tape recorder that another agent had left under the driver’s seat.
It took fifteen minutes to get to the university. The fare was $3.85. Loomis gave the driver a five and told him to keep the change. She walked across the campus and entered a Ford which drove straight to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. A lot of work had gone into this—and it had been so easy!
“Always is, when the bear walks into your sight.” The inspector who had been running the case turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “The problem is finding the damned bear in the first place.”
The Pentagon
“Gentlemen, you have been asked here because each of you is a career intelligence officer with a working knowledge of submarines and Russian,” Davenport said to the four officers seated in his office. “I have need of officers with your qualifications. This is a volunteer assignment. It could involve a considerable element of danger—we cannot be sure at this point. The only other thing I can say is that this will be a dream job for an intelligence officer—but the sort of dream that you’ll never be able to tell anyone about. We’re all used to that, aren’t we?” Davenport ventured a rare smile. “As they say in the movies, if you want in, fine; if not, you may leave at this point, and nothing will ever be said. It is asking a lot to expect men to walk into a potentially dangerous assignment blindfolded.”
