by Stuart Woods
“Yeah, it is a little like that,” Martin agreed, “but it’s bigger. It looks to me like the attack periscope of a submarine.”
Rule looked sharply up at him. “Are you sure?”
Martin laughed. “Not even a little bit, but look at this.” He spread some sort of map out on her desk. “There’s no American, British, Swedish, or Finnish nautical chart for this area, but I found an aeronautical chart. See the square I’ve drawn here? That’s the area covered by the coordinates of the satshot. Our bird is passing from northwest to southeast, so the rectangle of the area is tilted a little. Out here, you’ve got the Baltic, then the Latvian coast, then, just inside the coast, another body of water called Liepaja Ezers, a sort of tidal lagoon, sheltered from the Baltic by this narrow strip of land. There’s a narrow entrance, here, probably natural, but also probably improved to allow shipping to pass through. Maybe they’re moving subs in and out of there.”
Rule stared at the object on the photograph. “It looks too small to be a periscope,” she said.
“An attack periscope,” Martin said. “Submarines have a regular scope for general use, but when there’s hostile shipping in the area, they use a much smaller one, one that is less noticeable, that makes less of a wake. I’d say that object is just about the right size for an attack periscope.”
Rule looked around the perimeters of the satshot. “Have you seen anything on this or any other shot to indicate submarine pens?”
Martin shook his head. “Nope, and that makes my identification of that thing as a scope very suspect, unless they’ve just run a sub into the lagoon, submerged for some sort of training exercise. But hell, who knows what they’re up to over there.” He got up and struggled into his jacket. “Well, it’s not my job to guess. I just gaze at images, you’re the analyst; you do the analyzing. I’m going home and get some sleep.”
“Thanks, Martin,” Rule said. “I appreciate your showing this to me before leaving, and thanks, too, for taking the trouble to dig out that aero chart.”
“All part of the service,” Martin said, tossing a wave over his shoulder. “Just part of your friendly, CIA curb service.”
Rule sat, staring at the satshot, at the golf cart, at the Ingram, maybe, at the periscope, maybe, at the Mercedes. Perhaps it was because it was early in the morning and she was fresh; maybe it was a message from outer space; maybe it was that least favorite thing of her superiors, her woman’s intuition; maybe she was crazy; but half a dozen, eight, maybe ten isolated fragments of seemingly useless information popped together in her head, and she had something. It was like having some of the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spread out before her, and from their accidental juxtaposition, suddenly visualizing the whole scene—and without even looking at the picture on the box.
She got COSMO up and running, called up indices of station reports, started gleaning. She hoped to God the computer input people were caught up with their work, because she’d never find the pieces of paper again, once they’d crossed her desk. She was lucky. She selected incidents from reports as they ran, and dumped them to her printer. She tapped into NEXIS, a computer news service, and extracted a dozen news stories dating back to October 1981. Before lunch, she had them all, the whole skimpy, ridiculous bunch of reports, facts and guesses, and during the morning she never stopped thinking. It wouldn’t go away, it wouldn’t fragment, it stayed and grew in her mind. She had it, she was sure of it, she believed it.
She grabbed the extracts, the satshot, the air chart, and all the hope she could muster and headed for Alan Nixon’s office.
12
HELDER sat in the uncomfortable, plastic seat and ran through his checklist just once more. He had been thoroughly over the minisub with Sokolov, and he had to admit she knew what she was doing when it came to the electronics and the other equipment aboard. It still bothered him that she had no experience of submarines, but, with the way the sub’s controls were laid out, that shouldn’t pose any problem; he could steer and navigate the vessel and deploy the buoy; she would monitor the mechanical, electric, and electronic systems and handle communications. He was thankful that the seating was fore and aft; at least he didn’t have to look directly at the implacable face, the nearly dead eyes all the time. There was a mirror mounted overhead and to his left, but it was awkwardly enough placed not to invite much use. With another crew he might have ordered it relocated, but with Valerie Sokolov, he was thankful for its placement. She smelled, too. They had not been screwed down in the sub for five minutes before it smelled like a locker room.
He glanced toward the forward ports and took in a divided scene. The lower half of the glass discs was under water, the top half, above. The faces of the maintenance crew gazed back at him. One gave him a thumbsup sign. He replied in a like manner. “Ready to submerge,” he said, as much to himself as to Sokolov.
“Ready,” she said.
It bothered him that she did not refer to him as captain or skipper, but he would not let his annoyance show. She seemed never to speak an unnecessary syllable.. “Diving,” he said, and reached for the rocker switches at the panel to his right. Blow tanks, he said to himself, then threw the switches. There was a rumble and the sub sank quickly. Level off at two meters, he ordered himself, and his fingers and the sub obeyed him. He was accustomed to giving orders to a crew. He would have to get over that; it took too much time. In an emergency, he wouldn’t want to waste the fraction of a second required to give an order; he wanted just to react. He reached for the throttle—an electrical slide switch, really, but he thought of it as a throttle—and asked it for two knots. Less than his cruising speed of three knots, but sufficient for good control of the vessel. There was a low whine, and immediately, the sub moved forward and out of the pen. As they cleared the roof of the pens pale sunlight came into the sub, and the red interior lighting seemed unnecessary. “Switch off inside lights,” he said.
Nothing happened. He turned his head and looked up into the mirror at Sokolov. She seemed to be staring straight ahead. “Sokolov! Switch off inside lights!” She jerked, looked confused for a moment, then hit the switch. “Thank you,” he said coldly, “and when I give you an order I want it carried out immediately, do you understand?” He could nearly feel her flush behind him.
“Yes, sir, I am very sorry.”
He held his course for a couple of minutes, to clear the end of the marina, then, glancing at his chart for a last confirmation of his position, he turned the sub south down the lake and pushed the joystick lightly. Four meters, then six showed on the fathometer. The interior of the vessel grew darker, and the instruments glowed green in the dimness. With a foot he pressed the right rudder, and the sub responded at once. He tried left rudder; the sub turned, then straightened to his touch. The controls were even lighter than on the unmodified version of the sub. He liked that; it increased the sensation of flying under water. He pushed down on the joystick again and sank another two meters. His instruments now showed eight meters of water above him, four below. On the chart the lake deepened as it ran south. He-continued to move the sub downward, keeping four meters of water under his keel. The dim light in the cabin faded even more.
“I … I can’t see my control panel,” Sokolov said. She sounded nervous.
“Well, switch on your bloody panel lights; you should have done that before we sailed.” Good. She needed bringing into line.
“I can’t see the switch for the panel lights,” she said rapidly.
“Haven’t you got a torch back there?” he asked harshly.
There was a rattling noise, and a few seconds later, a bright light reflected off the white inside of the sub’s hull. “There, I’ve found the switch,” she said, and the torch went off, leaving them in total blackness.
Helder cut the throttle and let the sub sink until it bumped bottom. “Perfect,” he said. “Now you’ve blown my night vision. We’ll just sit here until it returns.”
“I’m sorry, Captain,” she said softly. “I’m ver
y sorry. I didn’t think.”
Good. Now she was calling him captain, at least, and he hadn’t had to ask her. He yanked back on the stick and pushed the throttle to full ahead. He heard Sokolov gasp as the sub reared back and shot toward the surface. He leveled off at two meters, grinning. He had subdued her, he reckoned; now he had to figure out if she was going to be anything more than a passenger on this mission.
13
RULE’S heart slammed systematically into her ribcage as she seated herself across the desk from Alan Nixon. Just as she intuitively knew that she had hold of something very important, she instinctively knew that this meeting might determine whether anything ever came of it. They were very different, she and Nixon. She was trained and experienced at her work, brilliant, even, impulsive, daring. But she had difficulty assessing the political consequences of her actions. Nixon was trained as an executive, not as an analyst; he was politically motivated, and if he did not have her grasp of intelligence analysis, he rarely put a foot wrong when making a request for resources or a recommendation for action. If she could win his interest, now, he would know from whom to get a further hearing and how best to do it. She took a deep breath and started.
“Alan, I need your help.” An appeal, not an announcement seemed the best approach.
“Of course, Kate. Anything I can do.” Nixon put his feet on the desk and folded his hands across his middle, the most receptive possible attitude; Rule knew from experience. Then, “Is this about your Majorov?” Trouble. He was already impatient with her about that.
“Partly,” she said, “but much broader. Let me go into some background, here. I know you know all of this stuff,” (like hell he did) “but I need to piece this together as much for my own benefit as for yours, so bear with me.”
Nixon nodded sagely.
“In October 1981, a Soviet Whiskey class submarine ran aground on the Swedish coast, near a sensitive military installation. It made worldwide headlines, you’ll remember, and after that, there was a rash of periscope sightings in various parts of Sweden. A Swedish naval officer having lunch in downtown Stockholm spotted a periscope smack in the middle of the city, at a time when three American warships were visiting there, that sort of thing.”
Nixon’s eyebrows went up.
“Now, this was not an entirely new occurrence; there had been reports of Soviet subs in Swedish waters for years. We assumed they were there to give their crews some hard experience in waters which, if not exactly friendly, were not exactly hostile. They were running at about twenty a year. But since the ‘Whiskey on the rocks’ incident, they’ve been running at two hundred a year, and some of them have been very peculiar.”
“How so?” Nixon asked, forgetting that he was supposed to know about this.
“First of all, when challenged, the subs have not broken and run the way they used to. As often as not, they’ve pressed further into Swedish territory, even under pursuit. Second, there have been credible reports, not just of subs, but of frogmen being landed from them and heading away from the sea. Some militiamen have taken shots at them, but have never caught one. But the most peculiar thing about all this is that nobody, not the Swedish government, not their military nor their intelligence, not our military nor our intelligence, has been able to come up with a credible hypothesis of why the Soviets are doing this. Oh, there are lots of theories—everything from training exercises to just fun and games—but none of them really adds up, none of them makes for any reasonable balance between what the Soviets have to gain from all of this and what they have to lose. They have, for instance, already been publicly humiliated in the world’s press when their sub got caught aground in Sweden, but that didn’t stop their incursions. As I mentioned, they have increased ten-fold since that incident.”
“Well, you’re right, Kate, the whole thing certainly is baffling. Do you have a new theory on why they’re doing it?”
Rule held up a hand. “Not a new theory; maybe some support for an old one. But hang on, there are some other points to bring into this. They’re pretty scattered, but there may be a broad pattern emerging, which brings me to Majorov, who just might be the key to the whole thing.”
Nixon took his feet off the desk and sat up straight. His expression had gone blank.
Rule spread out her two satellite photographs on his desk. “What we seem to have here is a very special sort of military training base. It’s at Liepaja, on the Latvian coast, and it’s special because they’ve gone to so much trouble to make it seem like something else.” She pointed out the drilling joggers and the double fencing. “We know that Majorov loves expensive foreign cars and gadgets, and here we have, on the same base, mind you, a Mercedes 500 SE, which simply does not exist outside of Moscow, and, would you believe it, a golf cart?”
Nixon pulled a large magnifying glass from his desk drawer and examined the golf cart.
Rule tapped the photograph. “I’d bet a year’s salary that one of those two men in the cart, the one with the baseball cap, is Majorov, and Majorov’s presence here increases the importance of this base to the nth degree.”
“What else have you got, Kate?” Nixon asked.
“Little stuff, crazy stuff, but stuff that fits. Item: the laundries at two marine infantry bases are suddenly doing markedly fewer shirts—that means significant numbers of men are being transferred elsewhere. Item: last month, two thousand Ingram Mark 10 submachineguns were stolen from a British arms depot—this guard”—she tapped the satshot—”has an Ingram Mac 10 slung over his shoulder. Item: there isn’t a known Soviet submarine base between Leningrad and Kaliningrad, down near the Polish border, but one of our best imagery analysts says that little thing right there is a submarine periscope. Item: now get this, please—during the last two years the Soviets have suddenly, dramatically increased the teaching of the Swedish language in their universities and language centers. Let me tell you something, Alan. Swedish is the most useless language in the world, unless you’re in Sweden.”
Nixon looked up sharply at her. “What are you getting at, Kate?”
Rule pulled a news story from her file. “This is a direct quote from Vice Admiral Bengt Schuback, who was at the time chief of staff of the Royal Swedish Navy, and who now is their equivalent of our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: ‘A foreign power is preparing for war with Sweden.’ “Rule put down the paper and looked at Nixon. “That’s just one of the many theories about what the Soviet subs are doing in Swedish waters, of course, but I think what is developing here suddenly lends a lot of weight to it, don’t you think?”
Nixon stared at her dumbly for a moment, then managed to speak. “But why? Why would the Soviets suddenly abandon their policy of expansion without armed conflict to do something that might start World War III?”
“Start World War III? With whom? With us? Sweden is as determinedly neutral as Switzerland; she has no, repeat, no allies. Suppose, for a moment, that NATO decided to intervene; how would we do it? We have no land forces in place to stop a Soviet invasion of Sweden; we’d have to use nuclear weapons. Do you think for a moment that NATO would start a nuclear war, risking the destruction of Europe, possibly the world, to save eight million Swedes from Soviet domination?”
Nixon’s eyes seemed to go out of focus. He sat, frozen, seemingly speechless. Then he seemed to come to himself. “Kate, I’m going to have to talk with some other people about this. Is this everything you have?”
“It’s everything I can get without a lot more authority. If you can get me the clout, then I know I can come up with a lot more.” She made a determined effort to sound cool and calm. “Look, Alan, I don’t want to sound like a crank about this; I know as well as anybody you’re going to talk to that all I’ve got here is, at best, informed supposition. But intelligence analysis is not quantum physics; it doesn’t operate according to some immutable natural law. Sometimes it’s just a step away from fortune telling, you know that, but I have to tell you, that based on my experience, I really believ
e something is going on here. I can’t prove it, though, and I’m not going to be able to unless you can persuade somebody to launch some sort of covert initiative to turn up more raw intelligence.”
“Just what sort of initiative do you want?”
Rule knew better than that. Simon Rule was director of Operations, and he would not be thrilled to hear her advice on the subject. “There are people in the company better qualified than I to decide that,” she said. “When they see this stuff, they’ll know the sort of information they need; they can put it out to the appropriate networks. Do you want me to go with you to put my case?” She knew he could do it better than she, if only he believed her. She thought he did.
“No, I think it’s better if I handle it myself, at least for the moment.” He gathered the photographs and her file together and stood up. “I’m going to see somebody now, so stay in your office until you hear from me. Does anybody else know about this?”
“Only fragments. You’re the only person I’ve given it all to.”
“Good. For God’s sake, don’t say a word about this to anybody else.” Nixon walked out of his office with her file and left her standing there.
Rule took half a dozen deep breaths. She had done it; she had hooked Alan Nixon, and now he was carrying the ball. She walked back to her office with a light step. She wanted Alan Nixon’s job when he retired, and this was the sort of operation that would help her get it. This was original, brilliant work, she knew it, the sort of opportunity that came along once in a career, if you were lucky. She had gotten lucky.
14
HELDER walked once more around the minisub, the clipboard in his hand. He looked up to see Majorov striding toward him across the giant sub shed. Majorov wasn’t going to like this. He was a planner, and he wasn’t going to like being told his plan was wrong.
