The Hunt for Red October

by Tom Clancy

  “We didn’t know at first who had leaked it. It had to be you, or one of two others, so we began to leak information to individual committee members. It took six months, but your name came up three times. After that we had Director Jacobs check out all of your staffers. Emil?”

  “When Henderson was an assistant editor of the Harvard Crimson, in 1970, he was sent to Kent State to do a piece on the shooting. You remember, the ‘Days of Rage’ thing after the Cambodian incursion and that awful screw-up with the national guard. I was in on that, too, as luck would have it. Evidently it turned Henderson’s stomach. Understandable. But not his reaction. When he graduated and joined your staff he started talking with his old activist friends about his job. This led to a contract from the Russians, and they asked for some information. That was during the Christmas bombing—he really didn’t like that. He delivered. It was low-level stuff at first, nothing they couldn’t have gotten a few days later from the Post. That’s how it works. They offered the hook, and he nibbled at it. A few years later, of course, they struck the hook nice and hard and he couldn’t get away. We all know how the game works.

  “Yesterday we planted a tape recorder in his taxi. You’d be amazed how easy it was. Agents get lazy, too, just like the rest of us. To make a long story short, we have you on tape promising not to reveal the information to anyone, and we have Henderson here spilling that data not three hours later to a known KGB agent, also on tape. You have violated no laws, Senator, but Mr. Henderson has. He was arrested at nine last night. The charge is espionage, and we have the evidence to make it stick.”

  “I had no knowledge whatever of this,” Donaldson said.

  “We hadn’t the slightest thought that you might,” Ritter said.

  Donaldson faced his aide. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Henderson didn’t say anything. He thought about saying how sorry he was, but how to explain his emotions? The dirty feeling of being an agent for a foreign power, juxtaposed with the thrill of fooling a whole legion of government spooks. When he was caught these emotions changed to fear at what would happen to him, and relief that it was all over.

  “Mr. Henderson has agreed to work for us,” Jacobs said helpfully. “As soon as you leave the Senate, that is.”

  “What does that mean?” Donaldson asked.

  “You’ve been in the Senate, what? Thirteen years, isn’t it? You were originally appointed to fill out an unexpired term, if memory serves,” Moore said.

  “You might try asking my reaction to blackmail,” the senator observed.

  “Blackmail?” Moore held his hands out. “Good Lord, Senator, Director Jacobs has already told you that you have broken no laws, and you have my word that the CIA will not leak a word of this. Now, whether or not the Justice Department decides to prosecute Mr. Henderson is not in our hands. ‘Senate Aide Convicted of Treason: Senator Donaldson Professes No Knowledge of Aide’s Action.’”

  Jacobs went on, “Senator, the University of Connecticut has offered you the chair in their school of government for some years now. Why not take it?”

  “Or Henderson goes to prison. You put that on my conscience?”

  “Obviously he cannot go on working for you, and it should be equally obvious that if he is fired after so many years of exemplary service in your office, it will be noticed. If, on the other hand, you decide to leave public life, it would not be too surprising if he were not able to get a job of equivalent stature with another senator. So, he will get a nice job in the General Accounting Office, where he will still have access to all sorts of secrets. Only from now on,” Ritter said, “we decide which secrets he passes along.”

  “No statute of limitations on espionage,” Jacobs pointed out.

  “If the Soviets find out,” Donaldson said, and stopped. He didn’t really care, did he? Not about Henderson, not about the fictitious Russian. He had an image to save, losses to cut.

  “You win, Judge.”

  “I thought you’d see it our way. I’ll tell the president. Thanks for coming in, Senator. Mr. Henderson will be a little late to the office this morning. Don’t feel too badly about him, Senator. If he plays ball with us, in a few years we might let him off the hook. It’s happened before, but he’ll have to earn it. Good morning, sir.”

  Henderson would play along. His alternative was life in a maximum security penitentiary. After listening to the tape of his conversation in the cab, he’d made his confession in front of a court stenographer and a television camera.

  The Pigeon

  The ride to the Pigeon had been mercifully uneventful. The catamaran-hull rescue ship had a small helicopter platform aft, and the Royal Navy helicopter had hovered two feet above it, allowing Ryan and Williams to jump down. They were taken immediately to the bridge as the helicopter buzzed back northeast to her home.

  “Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” the captain said agreeably. “Washington says you have orders for me. Coffee?”

  “Do you have tea?” Williams asked.

  “We can probably find some.”

  “Let’s go someplace we can talk in private,” Ryan said.

  The Dallas

  The Dallas was now in on the plan. Alerted by another ELF transmission, Mancuso had brought her to antenna depth briefly during the night. The lengthy EYES ONLY message had been decrypted by hand in his cabin. Decryption was not Mancuso’s strong point. It took him an hour as Chambers conned the Dallas back to trail her contact. A crewman passing the captain’s cabin heard a muted damn through the door. When Mancuso reappeared, his mouth couldn’t keep from twitching into a smile. He was not a good card player either.

  The Pigeon

  The Pigeon was one of the navy’s two modern submarine rescue ships designed to locate and reach a sunken nuclear sub quickly enough to save her crew. She was outfitted with a variety of sophisticated equipment, chief among them the DSRV. This vessel, the Mystic, was hanging on its rack between the Pigeon’s twin catamaran hulls. There was also a 3-d sonar operating at low power, mainly as a beacon, while the Pigeon cruised in slow circles a few miles south of the Scamp and Ethan Allen. Two Perry-class frigates were twenty miles north, operating in conjunction with three Orions to sanitize the area.

  “Pigeon, this is Dallas, radio check, over.”

  “Dallas, this is Pigeon. Read you loud and clear, over,” the rescue ship’s captain replied on the secure radio channel.

  “The package is here. Out.”

  “Captain, on Invincible we had an officer send the message with a blinker light. Can you handle the blinker light?” Ryan asked.

  “To be part of this? Are you kidding?”

  The plan was simple enough, just a little too cute. It was clear that the Red October wanted to defect. It was even possible that everyone aboard wanted to come over—but hardly likely. They were going to get everyone off the Red October who might want to return to Russia, then pretend to blow up the ship with one of the powerful scuttling charges Russian ships are known to carry. The remaining crewmen would then take their boat northwest into Pamlico Sound to wait for the Soviet fleet to return home, sure that the Red October had been sunk and with the crew to prove it. What could possibly go wrong? A thousand things.

  The Red October

  Ramius looked through his periscope. The only ship in view was the USS Pigeon, though his ESM antenna reported surface radar activity to the north, a pair of frigates standing guard over the horizon. So, this was the plan. He watched the blinker light, translating the message in his mind.

  Norfolk Naval Medical Center

  “Thanks for coming down, Doc.” The intelligence officer had taken over the office of assistant hospital administrator. “I understand our patient woke up.”

  “About an hour ago,” Tait confirmed. “He was conscious for about twenty minutes. He’s asleep now.”

  “Does that mean he’ll make it?”

  “It’s a positive sign. He was reasonably coherent, so there’s no evident brain damage. I
was a little worried about that. I’d have to say the odds are in his favor now, but these hypothermia cases have a way of souring on you in a hurry. He’s a sick kid, that hasn’t changed.” Tait paused. “I have a question for you, Commander: Why aren’t the Russians happy?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Kind of hard to miss. Besides, Jamie found a doctor on staff who understands Russian, and we have him attending the case.”

  “Why didn’t you let me know about that?”

  “The Russians don’t know either. That was a medical judgment, Commander. Having a physician around who speaks the patient’s language is simply good medical practice.” Tait smiled, pleased with himself for having thought up his own intelligence ploy while at the same time adhering to proper medical ethics and naval regulations. He took a file card from his pocket. “Anyway, the patient’s name is Andre Katyskin. He’s a cook, like we thought, from Leningrad. The name of his ship was the Politovskiy.”

  “My compliments, Doctor.” The intelligence officer acknowledged Tait’s maneuver, though he wondered why it was that amateurs had to be so damned clever when they butted into things that didn’t concern them.

  “So why are the Russians unhappy?” Tait did not get an answer. “And why don’t you have a guy up there? You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew what ship he escaped from, and you knew why she sank…So, if they wanted most of all to know what ship he came from, and if they don’t like the news they got—does that mean they have another missing sub out there?”

  CIA Headquarters

  Moore lifted his phone. “James, you and Bob get in here right now!”

  “What is it, Arthur?” Greer asked a minute later.

  “The latest from CARDINAL.” Moore handed xeroxed copies of a message to both men. “How quick can we get word out?”

  “That far out? Means a helicopter, a couple of hours at least. We have to get this out quicker than that,” Greer urged.

  “We can’t endanger CARDINAL, period. Draw up a message and get the navy or air force to relay it by hand.” Moore didn’t like it, but he had no choice.

  “It’ll take too long!” Greer objected loudly.

  “I like the boy, too, James. Talking about it doesn’t help. Get moving.”

  Greer left the room cursing like the fifty-year sailor he was.

  The Red October

  “Comrades. Officers and men of Red October, this is the captain speaking.” Ramius’ voice was subdued, the crewmen noticed. The incipient panic that had started a few hours earlier had driven them to the brittle edge of riot. “Efforts to repair our engines have failed. Our batteries are nearly flat. We are too far from Cuba for help, and we cannot expect help from the Rodina. We do not have enough electrical power even to operate our environmental control systems for more than a few hours. We have no choice, we must abandon ship.

  “It is no accident that an American ship is now close to us, offering what they call assistance. I will tell you what has happened, comrades. An imperialist spy has sabotaged our ship, and somehow they knew what our orders were. They were waiting for us, comrades, waiting and hoping to get their dirty hands on our ship. They will not. The crew will be taken off. They will not get our Red October! The senior officers and I will remain behind to set off the scuttling charges. The water here is five thousand meters deep. They will not have our ship. All crewmen except those on duty will assemble in their quarters. That is all.” Ramius looked around the control room. “We have lost, comrades. Bugayev, make the necessary signals to Moscow and to the American ship. We will then dive to a hundred meters. We will take no chance that they will seize our ship. I take full responsibility for this—disgrace! Mark this well, comrades. The fault is mine alone.”

  The Pigeon

  “Signal received: ‘SSS,’” the radioman reported.

  “Ever been on a submarine before, Ryan?” Cook asked.

  “Nope, I hope it’s safer ’n flying.” Ryan tried to make a joke of it. He was deeply frightened.

  “Well, let’s get you down to Mystic.”

  The Mystic

  The DSRV was nothing more than three metal spheres welded together with a propeller on the back and some boiler plating all around to protect the pressure-bearing parts of the hull. Ryan was first through the hatch, then Williams. They found seats and waited. A crew of three was already at work.

  The Mystic was ready for operation. On command, the Pigeon’s winches lowered her to the calm water below. She dived at once, her electric motors hardly making any noise. Her low-power sonar system immediately acquired the Russian submarine, half a mile away, at a depth of three hundred feet. The operating crew had been told that this was a straightforward rescue mission. They were experts. The Mystic was hovering over the missile sub’s forward escape trunk within ten minutes.

  The directional propellers worked them carefully into place and a petty officer made certain that the mating skirt was securely fastened. The water in the skirt between Mystic and Red October was explosively vented into a low-pressure chamber on the DSRV. This established a firm seal between the two vessels, and the residual water was pumped out.

  “Your ball now, I guess.” The lieutenant motioned Ryan to the hatch in the floor of the middle segment.

  “I guess.” Ryan knelt by the hatch and banged a few times with his hand. No response. Next he tried a wrench. A moment later three clangs echoed back, and Ryan turned the locking wheel in the center of the hatch. When he pulled the batch up, he found another that had already been opened from below. The lower perpendicular hatch was shut. Ryan took a deep breath and climbed down the ladder of the white painted cylinder, followed by Williams. After reaching the bottom Ryan knocked on the lower hatch.

  The Red October

  It opened at once.

  “Gentlemen, I am Commander Ryan, United States Navy. Can we be of assistance?”

  The man he spoke to was shorter and heavier than himself. He wore three stars on his shoulder boards, an extensive set of ribbons on his breast, and a broad gold stripe on his sleeve. So, this was Marko Ramius…

  “Do you speak Russian?”

  “No sir, I do not. What is the nature of your emergency, sir?”

  “We have a major leak in our reactor system. The ship is contaminated aft of the control room. We must evacuate.”

  At the words leak and reactor Ryan felt his skin crawl. He remembered how positive he had been that his scenario was correct. On land, nine hundred miles away, in a nice, warm office, surrounded by friends—well, not enemies. The looks he was getting from the twenty men in this compartment were lethal.

  “Dear God! Okay, let’s get moving then. We can take off twenty-five men at a time, sir.”

  “Not so fast, Commander Ryan. What will become of my men?” Ramius asked loudly.

  “They will be treated as our guests, of course. If they need medical attention, they will get it. They will be returned to the Soviet Union as quickly as we can arrange it. Did you think we’d put them in prison?”

  Ramius grunted and turned to speak with the others in Russian. On the flight from the Invincible Ryan and Williams had decided to keep the latter’s knowledge of Russian secret for a while, and Williams was now dressed in an American uniform. Neither thought a Russian would notice the different accent.

  “Dr. Petrov,” Ramius said, “you will take the first group of twenty-five. Keep control of the men, Comrade Doctor! Do not let the Americans speak to them as individuals, and let no man wander off alone. You will behave correctly, no more, no less.”

  “Understood, Comrade Captain.”

  Ryan watched Petrov count the men off as they passed through the hatch and up the ladder. When they were finished, Williams secured first the Mystic’s hatch and then the one on the October’s escape truck. Ramius had a michman check it. They heard the DSRV disengage and motor off.

  The silence that ensued was as long as it was awkward. Ryan and Williams stood in one corner of the compartme
nt, Ramius and his men opposite them. It made Ryan think back to high school dances where boys and girls gathered in separate groups and there was a no-man’s-land in the middle. When an officer fished out a cigarette, he tried breaking the ice.

  “May I have a cigarette, sir?”

  Borodin jerked the pack, and a cigarette came part way out. Ryan took it, and Borodin lit it with a paper match.

  “Thanks. I gave it up, but underwater in a sub with a bad reactor, I don’t think it’s too dangerous, do you?” Ryan’s first experience with a Russian cigarette was not a happy one. The black coarse tobacco made him dizzy, and it added an acrid smell to the air around them, which was already thick with the odor of sweat, machine oil, and cabbage.

  “How did you come to be here?” Ramius asked.

  “We were heading towards the coast of Virginia, Captain. A Soviet submarine sank there last week.”

  “Oh?” Ramius admired the cover story. “A Soviet submarine?”

  “Yes, Captain. The boat was what we call an Alfa. That’s all I know for sure. They picked up a survivor, and he’s in the Norfolk naval hospital. May I ask your name, sir?”

  “Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius.”

  “Jack Ryan.”

  “Owen Williams.” They shook hands all around.

  “You have a family, Commander Ryan?” Ramius asked.

  “Yes, sir. A wife, a son, and a daughter. You, sir?”

  “No, no family.” He turned and addressed a junior officer in Russian. “Take the next group. You heard my instructions to the doctor?”

  “Yes, Comrade Captain!” the young man said.

  They heard the Mystic’s electric motors overhead. A moment later came the metallic clang of the mating collar gripping the escape trunk. It had taken forty minutes, but it had seemed like a week. God, what if the reactor really was bad? Ryan thought.

  The Scamp

  Two miles away, the Scamp had halted a few hundred yards from the Ethan Allen. Both submarines were exchanging messages on their gertrudes. The Scamp sonarmen had noted the passage of the three submarines an hour earlier. The Pogy and Dallas were now between the Red October and the other two American subs, their sonar operators listening intently for any interference, any vessel that might come their way. The transfer area was far enough offshore to miss the coastal traffic of commercial freighters and tankers, but that might not keep them from meeting a stray vessel from another port.