But there on the icecap I looked into the eyes of the Americans —/ was conscious for all of twenty minutes — and I am ashamed to say that these men seemed much like us. Seafarers. Submariners. Navy men. I am ashamed to say that I would have been proud to drink vodka with these men. And in thinking this, I now realize that what I did was wrong, that the target I was launching at was a map drawn in blue with strange names written on it, names like "Norfolk" and "Boston" and "New York" and "Jacksonville." I was not shooting at people, and if I had met these men before I wrote my plan, perhaps things would have been different.
I do not know if that is contrition enough. But it is what I think.
My "confession" is over now. If it is used as my death warrant, so be it. I fully expect that as soon as I sign it and give it to a guard, I will not spend another night here, but will be lashed to the pole outside and feel the bullets ripping into me. Again, so be it. I am ready to die. Perhaps it is not only just, but it is time.
Signed,
Alexi Andrieovich Novskoyy
Prisoner
Novskoyy tossed the pad of paper on top of the other papers on the desk and walked over to look out the window. Time passed slowly until the sun set, the pines going black in the dimness of dusk. The guard came to bring him his dinner tray. Novskoyy gave him the confession, ignored the food, and sat on the bed, awaiting the inevitable.
He thought he would suffer through a sleepless night, but after signing the confession, he felt better. All the folklore about confession being good for the soul was grounded in fact after all, Novskoyy thought, and at eleven o'clock he put his head on the pillow and slept like a baby until sunrise.
Usually when he woke he would go through a morning routine. It consisted of going to the bathroom, shaving, stripping naked, and doing exercises. Then he walked from one wall to the next as fast as he could, bouncing off with his hands and
returning to the other wall, the walls marked with handprints. He kept this up for forty minutes, then finished with a round of crunches and push-ups. He'd stand and stretch until he stopped sweating, then he'd wash at the sink before putting his jumpsuit on. Then he would sit and read. He had gone through four to eight books a week since he'd been here, finishing them whether or not he liked them. It had been its own form of education.
But today was different. Somehow today he did not want to exercise. The idea of being found walking from one wall to the other stark naked when an execution crew arrived seemed too absurd. Even though morning meal came and went with nothing happening, it did not alter his state of expectation. Noon meal arrived, but he was not hungry. He tried to read, but the words did not hold his interest. He sat in his chair facing the door and waited. It was midafternoon before the footsteps came, three men from the sound of it. He sat back in his chair as the door gave its buzzing noise before the system opened it. It rolled open and revealed three men. Two guards and someone he'd never seen before.
The newcomer did not have the air of a warden or prison official, but seemed bouncy and restless, as if his body were unable to contain him and his energy. He wore a charcoal suit of expensive material, the design of the suit strange to the eye, the fabric draped over a large, barrel-chested, well-fed frame. The man kept his hands not at his sides but angling outward, as if he wanted to reach out and grab the entire room. He had a beard, much of it gray, with a thinning head of reddish-blond hair
framing large features, including eyes that stared out intensely. He seemed to be in his forties, though the years did not seem to have been particularly kind to him.
The newcomer held out his massive paw. "Alexi Novskoyy, good to meet you. My name is Rafael. I have a last name, but I never use it. Rafael alone is good enough. Mind if I call you Al? Goddamn small cell if you ask me. And by the way, what took you so long to write that damn confession? I've been trying to spring you out of here for three years. Cost me well over two million U.S. dollars. The Russian Federalists pocketed the wire transfer back in '15, and then I'm told you won't confess. They won't let you read my letters, it's all bullshit, because once they have the confession you're out. God, at last you picked up a pen."
American, Novskoyy thought, with a lilting speech carrying overtones of a European accent, the man's origins indistinct. Novskoyy stood slowly, looking at Rafael suspiciously. The man's speech came out like water from a firehose, Novskoyy thought, and loquaciousness had never been a quality he prized in his officers.
"Alexi Novskoyy," he growled, squeezing the American's hand. "What are you talking about?"
But Rafael could not be slowed, his speech continuing.
"Finally they tell me you've signed the confession. I read it just before they brought me up to the cellblock. T 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.' Jesus, where did you learn to write? And God, where did they teach that sense of drama? Remind me to keep you away from the word processor, Al. Come on." Rafael turned to the door. "Anytime now, gents," he said in a raised voice.
Novskoyy gawked at him as the door opened. Rafael was three steps down the corridor before he realized that Novskoyy remained in the cell, staring incredulously.
"Well, come on," Rafael said impatiently. "You don't want to stay here, do you? For God's sake, I doubt the Russian Feds will give me my two mil back. Follow me. I've got a chopper outside the courtyard and a jet at the airport—or what passes around here for an airport."
"Wait," Novskoyy said, his tone of command returning momentarily to his speech. "First you tell me what the hell is going on here. Where are we going?"
"What's going on here, Al, is you and I are getting out of here. We'll be in Africa in ten hours. I'll tell you about it on the way. Come on, we've got clients waiting."
"Clients?" Novskoyy walked hesitantly behind the big American down the corridor, past the massive stainless-steel-sheathed doors of the cellblock. Rafael walked in the exact center of the passageway, forcing Novskoyy to the side. Although it had been over a decade since Novskoyy had been a general officer in the Russian Navy, it irritated him that Rafael gave him no room to walk beside him, and the American's body was too big to walk beside in the narrow hallway. Feeling like a ridiculous
subordinate, Novskoyy walked two steps behind Rafael. He was opening his mouth to say something about it when Rafael handed him something over his big shoulder.
"Here. This is your new gig."
It was a card, looking like a plain white blank name card. But when Novskoyy took it, it lit up with a flash, colors and graphics bursting out all over it. In surprise, Novskoyy dropped it as if it had shocked him.
Rafael stopped and looked at him strangely. "What's the matter with you? Never seen a business card before? Jesus. Pick it up, it won't bite."
Novskoyy looked down at the card on the tile floor. It had changed back to a plain white cardboard inanimate object, but when he retrieved it, the colors and graphics lit up again. This time he held on to it, and watched as the colors swirled across the surface of the card, an elaborate sequence of rapidly appearing and fading three-dimensional images flashing over the card—one of them an ancient concept sketch of a helicopter, another a sketch of a man with outstretched arms with the man being suspended inside a wheel, then a sketch of a crustaceans's shell, then finally a bathy-scaph. The images then calmed down, and out of blue sky and clouds a series of letters appeared, growing closer, finally spelling out the words Da Vinci Consulting Group, and below that the words Alexi Novskoyy, Executive Vice President, Undersea Systems Division, At the bottom of the card were the words A Subsidiary of da Vinci Systems Limited, Rome, Milan, Florence, Paris, New York,
Berlin, Kiev, Seoul, Jakarta, Bangkok, Koala Lumpur, Beijing and then what looked like a phone number and a website address. Novskoyy stopped and looked up dumbly at Rafael. By then the two men were at the interior main door to the prison.
Seeing the shock on the former admiral's f
ace, Rafael's features softened and he turned and handed Novskoyy another card. This one did the same three-dimensional graphics tricks that the first had, with the same lettering, except the name and title read Rafael, President da Vinci Consulting Group, Managing Partner da Vinci Systems Limited, Florence, Italia. A photograph of Rafael's face appeared by the name, the face smiling and animated. Novskoyy looked up. His expression must have appeared as confused as he felt, because Rafael put his hand on Novskoyy's shoulder.
"Listen, Al," he said quietly, a fatherly tone in his voice. "You're a free man now that you signed that confession, but only to a certain extent. You can walk out of here, but here you're two thousand miles from civilization. A hell of a place to start your new life as a free citizen of the Russian Federated Republic. Besides which, you owe me almost three million dollars—I'm calculating interest on my investment—and I will be taking that out of your first year's bonus, by the way, but that should still leave a couple million for you. And don't worry, next year will be even better. We should clear ten, fifteen million each after expenses and taxes."
"Rafael, perhaps my mind is not as sharp as it
once was, but I woke up this morning a prisoner. What, exactly, am I now?"
Rafael smiled. "Until you walk through that door, a prisoner. But once we're out of the country and on our way, you're a businessman and my partner."
"How did you know about me?"
Rafael smiled. "The Russian Feds released the records of the undersea battle you fought thirteen years ago. I saw it, read it, and made a decision to hire you. And the more I read about you, the more I realized you're perfect for what we're trying to do now."
"You keep saying 'the Feds.' What are you talking about?"
"Russia split in two three years ago, Al. From the Urals west—European Russia—is the Russian Republic. From the Urals east to the Kamchatka Peninsula, that's the Russian Federated Republic, where you are now. Siberia. As in damned cold. Can we keep walking now?"
"So . . . what will you have me doing exactly?"
"This is not a good place to talk. Let's just say it involves doing what you were doing before."
"Before, I commanded a fleet of ships and thousands of men."
"That's not all you did. Think of your historical contribution."
"I almost started a world war."
"No, you didn't. The Americans made sure nothing happened. I'm talking about the ship you designed. The Omega."
"Omega. That's right, that's what the West called my Kaliningrad"
"Biggest and baddest nuclear submarine in town, right, Al? Well, at da Vinci we're consultants, naval architects, naval designers, and our clients need our skills, our brains, our designs, our—let's just say— strategic plans."
Rafael nodded to the guards behind a glass booth. The door buzzed open, and blindingly bright sunlight streamed into the vestibule. Novskoyy followed Rafael through to the outside, narrowing his eyes to slits in the sunshine. The air felt brisk and cold, but good. He'd had daily walks in the yard, a court not far from this part of the complex, but this air felt different, it felt free. They walked to a wall on the other side of the courtyard, where a tall gate opened slowly, driven by an electrical motor, and outside the gate a black shining Mercedes purred. Novskoyy stared at it for a long moment. It was unlike any car he'd ever seen, streamlined, with small headlights and a curving shape carved from the wind. There were no seams where the doors were supposed to be. And then, oddly enough, Rafael spoke to the car: "Open the left rear," and the door seams appeared just before the door popped open. Novskoyy got in while Rafael walked to the far side and addressed the car, which let him in.
Novskoyy found himself in a deep leather seat sitting in front of a display screen.
"Sorry about the old car," Rafael said. "It was all I could get up here." He touched a console in front of him, bringing lights and quiet humming
from the panel. "Airport, please, and crank up the jets on the Falcon."
The car started rolling in mystifying quiet, not a sound from the road coming into the cabin. It was sixty seconds into the drive before Novskoyy realized there was no driver. He looked over at Rafael with his mouth open, pointing to where a driver should be.
"What?" Rafael said, then seemed to notice Novskoyy's prison uniform. "Here, there are clothes in that bag on the floor. You need to wear a suit. We're stopping on the way to Rome, a little client meeting I have scheduled. We can't talk about it here—we have to assume anything we say is monitored in-country—but once we're across the border I'll bring you up to speed. By the way, I hope long hours aren't a problem for you. We've got a lot of work in front of us before the week is up. I've got two more clients lined up and a lot for you to help us out with. Here, have a shot. No more vodka for you. Better get used to red wine and single-barrel scotch. Oh, do you have any family in Russia or the Russian Federated Republic?" "No. No one. My mother died some time ago." "Okay. Then it's off to the meeting." Rafael didn't say another word. The limo arrived at a clearing, where a huge four-bladed helicopter waited, the rotors spinning at idle. By this time Novskoyy was beginning to see that this world would surprise him at every turn, and he must start to get used to that and stop acting like a wide-eyed five-year-old. Still, when the helicopter landed at the newly asphalted airstrip next to the towering
transport plane with its nose open revealing the mammoth cargo space, he had to stare. The helicopter's rotors were folded back, and it was loaded into the nose door of the immense jet transport while Rafael led him to a sleek delta-winged private jet. He climbed in, the engines came up with absolutely no noise, and soon he was airborne over the countryside of eastern Russia, the Federated Republic, wondering what was in store for him.
air explosives bursting in the scenery behind him. That such a compassionate man as Richard O'Shaughnessy would plaster scenes of grisly warfare on his walls often seemed a contradiction, but Dick would wave it off and insist that they were in the business of war, so they might as well remember that.
But the mural was too extreme for Pacino's taste, and while O'Shaughnessy was parachuting into Iran, Pacino had commanded the submarine Sea-wolf sitting high and dry in a graving drydock. At the time it had seemed the ground war would have little to do with the Navy, particularly the submarine force, but fate had had a different opinion, and the final battle that ended the war had taken place at sea on the business end of one of Seawolfs torpedo tubes. But that would not have made much of a mural, Pacino thought, and murals glorifying himself were not his style. He'd ordered the mural painted over with four coats of white latex paint.
For several months Pacino was content to use the office suite with just its white walls, finally allowing his chief of staff, Rear Admiral Paully White, to bring in a contractor to make the one renovation that Pacino approved of—knocking out the outside wall and replacing it with a floor-to-ceiling window, Pacino having always maintained that a true submariner missed weather more than anything else, including rain and overcast clouds, so that any office should bring as much of that weather inside as possible. On the inside wall the contractor's architect had fantasized about putting in a fireplace, and at first the idea seemed absurd,
but after the initial studies were done, Pacino proceeded, and the river-stone fireplace went in on the wall opposite the window. A delivery was made a month later—leather couches and chairs, courtesy of Dick O'Shaughnessy—and the suite began to shape up. Pacino's wife, Colleen, Fleet Admiral O'Shaughnessy's daughter, had commissioned a painter to put on canvas renditions of every ship Pacino had sailed, the result a beautiful series of paintings, from the ancient Piranha-class nuclear submarines Hawkbill and Devilfish to the recently constructed SSNX, the new Devilfish, designed by Pacino personally. Pacino shipped in his old desk from his former United Submarine Command Pacific Headquarters office, the desk made from timbers of John Paul Jones' Bon Homme Richard, and with it his massive oak library table. Today Pacino stood between the wide window overlooking t
he Potomac and the couches, realizing that a visitor to the suite would never know that Donchez or O'Shaughnessy had ever been here, and that was truly sad, both men having been vitally important to Pacino's career and his life.
Richard Donchez had died over a year ago, after being Pacino's mentor ever since he could remember, and Pacino found that he missed the old man more every day. Pacino's father had been gone since Pacino's plebe year at Annapolis, the victim of a submarine incident with the Russians under the polar icecap, and missing his father had seemed like the constant ache of an old war injury. On one wall there were two more paintings, both gifts from Colleen. One was an oil rendition of an old photo-
graph, with the conning tower of a Piranha-class sub in the background, with two officers in dress white uniforms wearing ceremonial swords in the foreground, one bald and older, one startlingly young with a full head of jet-black hair. The letters on the conning tower spelled out devilfish ssn-666. The old man was Donchez, the younger officer Pacino, back in the days before his hair turned stark white and he lost twenty pounds. The original Devilfish had gone down thirteen years ago under the polar icecap—not three hundred nautical miles from where his father's sub had been torpedoed— in an icy confrontation with the Omega-class attack submarine launched in the last days of the Russian Republic, and though Pacino had survived, he still wore the scars of the Arctic frostbite, his face and arms appearing dark, as if deeply tanned.
The second painting was another rendition of a photograph, this one of a young boy, perhaps eight years old, standing next to a tall man with black hair, another submarine in the background. The man in that picture looked like Pacino now, except not as gaunt: his father, Commander Anthony Pacino. Pacino put his hand on the painting, thinking, Rest in peace, Dad. Finally, the picture that occupied center stage on the wall was a blown-up photo of Pacino in the dress blue uniform of a full admiral, with the sail of the SSNX, the new Devilfish, in the background, and a tall youngster in a midshipman's uniform next to Pacino. The young midshipman had brown hair and soft features, a face that on a girl would be considered very pretty, wearing a frown as if trying to harden it, but there
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