more. Not after the business with the exercise. He glanced at the photo next to it, the one famous in the family. His father, grandfather, and greatgrandfather were all standing behind an eight-year-old version of himself on the deck of a fishing boat with a shark on the deck. All Navy officers, the reason he himself was. Annoyed, he looked away. Diana had always hated that he'd chosen the career his family had urged, and only now did he think she might have been right. He turned away from the shark picture and walked up the stairs.
He tossed his bag on the unmade bed, sensing her again even more strongly here. He peeled off the uniform stinking of submarine, ready to step into the shower. It occurred to him that the computer had no messages from Diana, but that wouldn't matter—he would tell Diana that he was finished with the Navy. Then they would get on with their lives, have the baby, and go on. They'd have to sell the house, though, and move someplace where he could get a job. He would do it on his own, the hard way, knowing that he could never work for Diana's father.
The water ran over him in the shower, the water as hot as he could stand it. He stayed in until the hot water ran out, then toweled off and pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and sat on the bed. Looking at the bed, he wondered if she had stayed in Wyoming.
He wandered through the house, glancing at his watch. It was Saturday and the light was fading into evening. He was sitting down to his desk, about to pick up the phone and find Diana, when the door-
bell rang. He thought of excuses he could give the neighbors but caught a glimpse of a black Lincoln staff utility truck in the driveway.
When he opened the door, he was eye to eye with Admiral Bruce Phillips. Phillips was wearing working khakis and a cloth garrison cap, which he removed.
"Can I come in?" he asked, the crow's feet at his eyes crinkling, his expression serious.
McKee waved him in, ruffling his hand at the hair on his neck, his habit when nervous or uncertain.
"I think I have some beer in the fridge," McKee said, walking toward the kitchen.
"I brought some," Phillips grinned, motioning to the driver, who brought in a cooler. "You've been at sea for a while, and I figured the cupboard might be bare. It sure used to be when I'd get home."
"Yeah," McKee said, sinking into one of the chairs, "I'm not sure if Diana has even been here, much less gone shopping. I haven't talked to her yet. We were in the middle of a big fight when your Seal commandos stopped by." McKee looked at Phillips. "They didn't bring beer."
"Sorry about that, Kelly," Phillips said. "That's really what I came by about. I wanted to apologize for the exercise. You know we're not in the business of lying to our skippers—"
"But you did anyway," McKee said, his voice cold.
"It was part of the . . . scenario," Phillips said lamely. "It was ... a prewritten . . . deal."
It was Phillips' way of saying someone else had
written the scenario and it had been rammed down his throat, McKee realized, but as admiral in command of the force, it was all the more imperative that Phillips "own the orders," the Navy's traditions demanding that a commander always act as if the orders he gave came from him.
"Doesn't matter, Admiral. I'm glad you're here. It'll soften the shock when I hand you my letter."
Phillips gulped and put down the bottle. "Say again?"
"I'm giving you a letter. I'm punching out."
"You're resigning on me? Because of the goddamn exercise?"
"Admiral. Bruce. Listen to me." McKee leaned far forward, his eyes drilling into Phillips'. "I took this thing to the mattresses for you. I gave a goddamn speech to my guys—duty, honor, country, the President needs us—which you turned into a bunch of bullshit. Now I look like an idiot to my entire crew. My XO, your Karen Petri, comes into my sea cabin after the attack and sees my hands are shaking so hard I can't light my goddamn cigar. I'm covered in sweat, and all I can think about is the men who supposedly died in that fleet. Sir, it's not just that I lost something in the eyes of my men and officers, it's that I lost something of myself in my own eyes. Admiral, when that torpedo was bearing down on us, I was so scared I think I might have wet my pants, but I'm thinking, it's okay because I saved the ship and I performed the mission, and then you say 'good dog,' and in front of the fucking Chief of Naval Operations I'm sitting there hearing it's a goddamn exercise." McKee was now
shouting. His hand swept his beer off the table, and the glass bottle shattered on the tile floor. For a moment he stared at it dumbly, then continued in a subdued tone, "Diana was right. It's time to quit the Boy Scouts and do something serious with my life."
"You don't think this is serious?" Phillips' face had turned red.
"No, Admiral. I used to, but I don't anymore, and it's thanks to you. I was about to tell Diana that the submarine was more important than my marriage when she told me to choose." McKee snorted. "Thank God I only wasted another week playing with the goddamn boat."
Phillips frowned and spoke, his words clipped and hard. "Godammit, it wasn't just an exercise. There really is an Argentina-Uruguay crisis, and it gets worse every day. The latest Argentina communications to the Ukraine are about the price of making the Black Sea Fleet a mercenary force. The higher-ups no longer talk about whether Argentina will use the Black Sea Fleet to attack Uruguay, but when. The Ukrainians haven't put to sea yet, but the CIA believes it's just a matter of time before Ukraine agrees to sail for the South Atlantic.
"And, anyway, Kelly, we got more data from that operation than ever imagined possible. The cameras in control—they recorded into the history module. I've looked at the disks. We're making a movie of the run, and it'll be a required course at prospective commanding officer school. Kelly, I'm not good at this—you just have to believe me. You were great out there. You showed them all how it's
done. You're our number one skipper. For God's sake, you're commanding our number one boat." Phillips held out his hands. "What more can I say? We can't lose you."
"Listen, Bruce. I believe a man has one battle in him, one chance to stretch beyond his best." He looked at Phillips. "You've already got my battle, and lucky you—it's on videodisk." He stood. "That's all I've got to say. I need to ask you to leave, Bruce. I've got to find Diana and tell her I'm out. You'll have my resignation e-mail by tonight."
Phillips frowned. "I'm not taking your resignation. I'm placing you on leave so you can think about this." He stood, walked to the door, opened it, and headed out into the night. He had turned to say something to McKee, who stood in the doorway, when the black staff truck rolled into the driveway. The vehicle was identical to Phillips', except it had the squadron's markings on it. The rear door opened and a uniformed naval officer stepped out, walking slowly up to the two men on the porch. The newcomer was a lieutenant commander, but looked older than usual for the midlevel rank, his cropped hair gray, his face wrinkled. Ribbons climbed his chest to his gold airborne wings. Above the sleeve stripes of his service dress blues were crosses instead of the usual stars.
"What's a Navy chaplain doing here?" Phillips mumbled to himself. The chaplain approached, and saluted.
"Commander Kyle L.E. McKee?"
"I'm McKee. What's going on?"
"Commander, I'm Chaplain Glenn Morris. I was
sent by the squadron to find your wife after you sent your messages. She wasn't seen by friends or family members out east. I flew out to your mountain cabin. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Commander. We found your wife's body inside. She had had a miscarriage and lost a lot of blood from a hemorrhage, and was trying to make it to the door to get help. There was nothing I could do. By the time I got there, she had been gone for several hours. I'm so terribly sorry, sir. We've made arrangements to fly Mrs. McKee's body home."
The chaplain had his hand on McKee's shoulder. McKee had gone white, his eyes unfocused. Phillips took over.
"I've got him, Chaplain. Get back to squadron."
"Yessir." The chaplain withdrew, his engine silent as the truck backed out
of the driveway and moved down the street.
McKee stared after it, then looked at Phillips.
"I can't believe it. She's gone. Oh my God, I should have been there. I would have been there. Oh, Jesus." His voice cracked on the last syllable, and the strength seemed to leave his legs.
Phillips quickly pulled him inside and sat him at the kitchen table. McKee didn't resist as the admiral filled a highball glass with whiskey. It burned on the way down. After a second, he barely resisted as his friend pulled him up the stairs and gently laid him on the bed. After what seemed like hours, he sank into a feverish sleep.
The phone rang at Michael Pacino's Annapolis waterfront home. "Hello," Pacino answered, clicking
into the video widescreen mounted on the wall by the oven. If it was the President, she'd see that he was clad in chinos and an old Naval Academy sweatshirt stained with grease and oil from working on the sailboat all day.
Pacino had been Chief of Naval Operations, the admiral-in-command of the Navy, for a year. He was over six feet tall, weighing the same as he had when he graduated from Annapolis. At forty-nine he was the youngest admiral ever to command the service, but despite his slim frame and unwrinkled face, he hardly appeared young. His face seemed perpetually tanned from an Arctic mission that had given him severe frostbite, along with deep crow's-feet at his eyes, bony cheekbones, and hollow cheeks on either side of a straight nose presiding over full lips. But his most noticeable feature in the roster of odd features was the color of his eyes, a deep emerald green, as if he wore the old fashioned colored contact lenses.
But the caller wasn't the President. The face of the commander of the Unified Submarine Command, Bruce Phillips, materialized onscreen. Phillips started talking immediately.
"We've lost McKee," he said, his voice and his face dead. "He turned in his sword over being treated like a piece of equipment."
"Dammit, I knew it," Pacino said. "I told Warner this would happen."
"It's worse, sir." Phillips told Pacino about Diana's death and the poor timing of the Seal commando raid.
"Where are you?"
"At McKee's. I put him down. I'll stay, make sure he's okay, maybe cook him breakfast in the morning, help him through the funeral arrangements. This time tomorrow we should be pretty drunk, so don't call me."
"Anything I can do, Bruce?"
"Yessir, but it's more in the category of inaction."
"Okay. What can I not do?"
"Useless fucking exercises for a President who doesn't understand the Navy, its machines, or its men."
"Bruce, the next sword that gets turned in will be mine. Call me tomorrow and let me know how he is, and I don't care how drunk you guys are."
Pacino clicked off and sat for a long time at the kitchen counter, staring at nothing.
yard. I had chest pains during two days in the winter. They took me out of the cell and to a hospital ward. The doctor said it was not a heart attack, but angina. I take pills for it now.
What is different about this year is that I finally understand that I am old and tired and will die soon. Yes. Up till this year I had always thought that one of the things that made me different from other people was that I was not afraid of death. Did I not go under the flooded water of the control room of the Kaliningrad when she was sinking under the ice? And even then my heart barely beat faster than normal. But now I am sixty-two years old, and I see that all my life I have been more afraid of death than anything else. I was not afraid on the Kaliningrad because I would not let myself acknowledge the fact of my own death. For sixty-two years I have been in denial, and now finally, after sitting on a cold metal table with no clothes and a strange machine strapped to my chest, I realize that death has been my constant fear, my overwhelming fear, and it fills my nightmares and sits behind my eyes and it paralyzes me.
At lunch, when I saw a guard, I asked for a pen and a pad of paper. They will release me if I confess in writing. Always until this moment I saw this as a trick. The minute they had my confession, they would execute me.
Now they tell me to confess and they will let me go. I still believe it is a trick. This paper will go into a file cabinet, and as the drawer shuts, the sounds of bullets will ring out over the courtyard. But I do not care now. I am not only old. I am tired. I no
longer want to live my final days here. So, believing that this confession will seal my fate, I now begin it.
The gray-haired, craggy-faced man, once barrel-chested but thin in his later years, looked over what he had written. It did not say exactly what he wanted, but what did it matter? He rubbed his neck, suddenly thinking how wonderful a shot of vodka would be, and tried to dismiss the thought. Perhaps they would grant a last request before they "released" him to the courtyard to be shot, he mused. He picked up the pen and began to write.
This is my confession.
My name is Alexi Novskoyy. When I was forty-eight years old I was named the Admiral in Command of the Red Banner Northern Fleet of the Russian Republic. During that time the fleet was being disarmed. The Rodina, the Motherland, was being disarmed. Our nuclear weapons, which up to then had protected us from the imperialism of the Americans, were being destroyed in front of a commission of the United Nations, a group of foreigners.
During that time I became convinced the disarmament of Russia was a crime. I acted to counter that crime. The details of what I did, which was labeled a war crime, have been documented by many people, many firsthand reports. But this is a confession, and in a confession — need I explain the obvious — the confessor must report his own crime. I will keep this short.
First, I substituted dummy cruise missiles for the weapons to be destroyed by the UN commission and
loaded what were purported to be exercise weapons onto 120 attack submarines of the Northern Fleet. But the exercise missiles were actually fully armed nuclear SSN-X-27 cruise missiles. I scrambled the fleet out of our northern submarine bases with instructions for them to sail to points offshore of America's eastern coast, where they were ordered to remain at mast-broach depth and await instructions. They formed a loaded pistol pointed at the temple of America. Meanwhile I took under the ice the newest, most revolutionary submarine ever built in world history, the Fleet Submarine Kaliningrad— the submarine called by the West the Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, a vessel I designed with my own two hands. We sailed under the ice of the polar icecap and surfaced at thin ice, in radio communication with the submarines of the Northern Fleet. It had been my original intention to threaten the politicians and military warmongers of the imperialist Americans with my nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and thereby force them to give theirs up, to be destroyed before a UN commission on their soil by foreigners. But under the icecap something happened.
To this day I am not sure how or where my attitude changed. Perhaps my intention was always there and I had hidden it from myself Or perhaps there is just something about a loaded pistol — the weight of it, the balance of heavy metal, the feel of the trigger, the knowledge that power is but a trigger pull away — that infected me. Instead of using my radio gear to address the evil men in Washington, D.C., I used it to send a molniya— a "go code" —
to the Northern Fleet submarines, ordering them to launch their cruise missiles at the strategic centers of the American east coast Even though I "went nuclear, " the plan would still have worked. With the military-industrial complex of the U.S.A. surgically destroyed, Russia would have stretched out her hand to the Americans and helped them rebuild, and together our nations would have marched into the future, side by side, in peace.
But my vision was not shared by the men in charge of the U.S. Navy. An American hunter-killer submarine was sent to assassinate my Kaliningrad. And perhaps that is what changed my plan from a threat to an action. Kaliningrad was torpedoed, her systems crippled. I fired back with a nuclear-tipped torpedo, meaning to sink the intruder under the icecap so that I could get back to my molniya, but the torpedo missed, and the nuclear de
tonation further injured the Kaliningrad. She flooded and sank. We got out in an escape pod, and found ourselves on the ice in a miserable Arctic storm, shipwrecked with the same Americans who had fired on us — since it turned out that their vessel had also been mortally injured by our torpedo. We were in a bubble shelter, but the generator died, and when the warmth ended, so did we. There was one other Russian survivor of all the men who had dived with me on the mission. I heard that later the other survivor died of his injuries. Two Americans survived, one of them the captain of the U.S. attack sub sent to kill us.
The storm raged on, but somehow we were rescued. The Americans turned us over to the Russian authorities. I was flown back to Russia in a transport
plane. It landed at a strip about five minutes from here. There was no trial, just confinement. I have not seen any more of the world since then, other than the pines outside my cell window. I have not heard any more of the world since then.
Novskoyy paused, his hand cramping from writing. He read over a paragraph, sickened at his own tone of melancholy, then looked away and began writing again.
No confession is complete without contrition. Am I sorry for what I have done? Am I sorry for the men who died, on both sides of the conflict I started?
It has been many years since then, and I have grown older and have had time to reflect on what has been labeled a war crime. At first I was defensive about it. No one could understand what the disarmament of Russia meant to world history. Our way of life would be extinguished.
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