"Then you'll know that two years ago, six advanced-technology Japanese Rising Sun-class nuclear submarines suddenly disappeared during their
sea trials. And suddenly they became the property of Red China. Did it ever occur to you to ask how that became possible?"
"Yes."
"I'll tell you how it became possible. A submersible designed by my staff engineers was delivered to the Red Chinese. Its demonstration run hijacked a Korean nuclear submarine while the Korean was submerged and going twenty knots."
Novskoyy stared. "Really?"
"Really. And do you know how long it took to build?"
"No. How long?"
"Ten days. Ten twenty-four-hour, intense, five-hundred-men-in-the-shop-working-around-the-clock-and-drinking-coffee-and-popping-amphetamines days. But we did it. And the Reds asked for a dozen more. We netted half a billion on that job. We're just doing the same thing again, except with a different country. We're not selling smoke and mirrors, we're selling a track record."
"Wait a minute. You built a submersible capable of stealing a nuclear submarine while the ship was submerged and making way?"
"We did. It worked quite well, in fact. But don't go thinking we can do it again to steal a supersub to do our job in Saudi waters. Standard procedure in every navy that runs nuclear subs now is to lock the hatches while at sea. We've become a victim of our own success."
"How did you do this? Who is the chief design engineer? The chief construction engineer? Who are these men?"
"You'll find out soon enough. The brains in charge of the operation is the managing director of da Vinci Maritime, our sister company. The MD is a former Chinese national named Suhkhula. Now listen, I haven't been briefed, but I understand that Suhkhula has something on the drawing board, ready for a prototype test. I'd notified da Vinci Maritime a few months ago that this system would need to happen. The Maritime people are on the case, and Suhkhula is managing the effort, just as with the Red Chinese submersibles. I'd wanted to introduce you in person, but I've got another sales call."
"Another one? What now?"
"Libya. Then Korea, then Red China. I'm going to talk to the political command structure to see if they're interested in seeing a demonstration of the system you're going to come up with. And then see if we can find a way to sell them the same service. If I can sell the demonstration alone to two of the three, we could gross another twenty or thirty million. If you have fifty million financing your system, I daresay you and Suhkhula should be able to construct a prototype that can do the demonstration. While you are shipping the prototype, the shop can be working on production of the second and third units."
"Get me to this shop. Get me to your man Soo-koo-lah or whatever his name is. We've got to go now, right goddamn now," Novskoyy said, stress making his voice waver just slightly. He stared down at the floor of the jet. Rafael looked closely at him.
"You can do this?"
"I guess I will have to."
"There's more I have to tell you."
"More? I must tell you—I just cannot wait."
"Hang in there, Al. When I said there was no system, I was testing your reaction. The good news is that Suhkhula already has designed a system for sinking the Saudi oil tankers. That problem was solved a month ago."
"And how were you going to do that?"
"Suhkhula will show you. It involves biological systems."
"Biosystems? Great," Novskoyy said, his disgust plain.
"It's the demonstration of the American cruise ship sinking that is somewhat beyond our present capacities. And that's what I'm going to need you to concentrate on."
"Your biosystems. If they're good enough to conquer the Saudi shipping, maybe they can work against the American cruise ship."
"Ask Suhkhula. Maybe you're right. Computer," Rafael said to the aircraft piloting system, "new destination. Milano."
The computer's voice answered as the wingtip dipped, the plane turning northwest.
The Mercedes limousine pulled up to a giant finger of glass and steel, towering eighty stories high over the center of the city. Part of the building elongated into a slicing edge, the "prow" of the skyscraper pointing due south. Two-story-tall, red-lit letters spelled da vinci maritime.
Alexi Novskoyy climbed slowly out of the limo and stood on the marble sidewalk, staring up at the black sheer wall of the structure high over his head, then around him at the other buildings in the design district. Gliding automobiles whispered by, not a one emitting exhaust smoke, not a one making an engine noise or tire sounds, and not a one having a driver or even a steering wheel. Crowds hustled around him, tall, beautiful women in strangely designed clothing, men wearing suits as strange as the ones Rafael wore. Novskoyy smelled something from a nearby restaurant, and he realized he was hungry. Behind him the Mercedes had pulled silently away, leaving him alone for the first time since he'd left the prison.
He felt a light touch on his forearm, and looked down to see long fingers on his sleeve, polished fingernails, a gold ring. He followed the fingers up the slim suit-jacketed arm of a woman with dark olive-colored skin. He looked up and saw the face of a stunning Chinese woman, with elegant almond-shaped eyes curving upward, strong cheekbones, a round, sensuous mouth. Her hair was gleaming black, cut sharply just above her shoulders, the hair flipping upward at the ends. She wore a black suit with a short skirt and a long jacket over a cream blouse, a strand of subdued black pearls at her throat. She was a head shorter than the Russian, and her legs were long and slim and toned, her muscles as defined as a mountain climber's. He saw that she had extended her hand to him. He took it, feeling the smoothness of her skin, the warmth of it electric. Novskoyy realized he had stopped
breathing, and when he realized why, he felt his face burn. She was the key to a lock in his mind, an archetype, a deeply desired dream. He brushed the idea off, reminded himself of his task, and brought himself back to the moment.
"Admiral," the woman said in melodic Chinese-accented English. "I am honored to meet you. I am Suhkhula, managing director, chief designer, and design project director of da Vinci Maritime, S.A. Welcome to Milan."
Novskoyy stared at her, trying to find his voice. "Yow are Suhkhula?" He swore to himself. Again Rafael had sandbagged him, not telling him that da Vinci Maritime's managing director was a woman. He tried to regain his composure and stop staring at her. He bent slightly at the waist. "Alexi Novskoyy. I am happy to make your acquaintance. I am sorry, your name, Sook-hoo-la? Is that correct?"
She smiled. "Yes, Suhkhula. The accent falls on the last syllable. My father said he made the name up, but it is an ancient name, from a mistress of an emperor three thousand years ago. Come in. We've got a lot of work to do."
Novskoyy followed her up the marble stairs into the cavernous entrance foyer of the building and into an elevator that rose swiftly to the seventy-eighth floor.
Suhkhula's office'occupied the acute angle of the building, the prow, two entire walls of the room three-meter-tall plate glass. Novskoyy was far from relaxed enough to sink into the leather couch against one of the windows, but the choice was that or a deep leather chair. He chose the couch and
accepted a cup of espresso from the elegant Chinese woman, her body graceful and lithe, her black suit jacket twirling as she spun to sit in the chair on the other side of the coffee table. Novskoyy took a sip of the strong brew, the heat of it burning his tongue.
"I was thinking," he said. "I spent some time reviewing the computer files of the work da Vinci Maritime did for the Navy of the Ukraine. The Severodvinsk submarine projects of the last three years have been amazing. The ship has exactly what we need to execute the operation against the American cruise ship and her escorts." Suhkhula frowned, but Novskoyy continued, "It has deception devices, making itself sound like biologies, a school of shrimp; even its active sonar pulse shape is the sound of a whale groan or shrimp clicking. It has an ultrahigh-resolution littoral water navigation sonar for sneaking into shallow ports. And best of all, it ha
s the Barrakuda model mobile mines. They catch up to the target surface ship, and instead of detonating, they attach themselves to the hull. And when programmed, they detonate, taking a ship down far away from the harbor where the attack was executed. So the work is done. All we have to do is deploy the systems." Novskoyy leaned back in his chair, pleased with his plan.
"Admiral?" Suhkhula put her slim index finger into the air. "There's something you should know."
"Urn," Novskoyy said, hesitating. "Could you not call me Admiral? I want to be known as Al. It's more . . . normal."
"Fine, Al. You need to stop talking and start listening." Her voice was iron.
Novskoyy blinked, confused, thinking Suhkhula was supposed to be his subordinate as the design project director. A slight flush of anger came to his face, joining the flush of his deepening interest in Suhkhula as a woman. Which he insisted on ascribing to his long prison term.
"Forget mechanical systems. Forget submarines. Forget metal mines with solid explosives. And forget anything metal with air inside it."
"Why? What are you talking about?"
"The new antisubmarine systems out there, the ones used by the Royal Navy and the Americans, can detect man-made objects a hundred kilometers away."
"No, they can't," Novskoyy said, confident from his years of reading physics journals.
"Have you heard of acoustic daylight imaging?"
"What?"
"Acoustic daylight, Al. Sonar is gone. Acoustic daylight is in. The newer navies use flat sensors that detect sound the way the retina of your eye detects light. The background noise of the ocean surrounds a ship in the ocean, and another man-made ship blocks the sound waves or bends them or focuses them, just as an object in daylight bends or blocks light waves. And just as your retina perceives the change in the light field as an object, the flat panels see the change in the acoustic noise field as an object. Now you know the physics of acoustic daylight. It's not high-technology hearing, it's high-technology sight. And anything that has a density
different from water shows up like an ink stain on a white shirt. Like a steel submarine with metal mobile mines."
Novskoyy's jaw dropped. "Just like that? A sonar system that can see? And you know this for a fact?"
"We know it for a fact. Let me see your computer."
He handed it over. She clicked through the software and gave it back. There were twenty websites describing acoustic daylight. He hit a few of them, finding immediately that Suhkhula was correct. His face sagged. He made her wait while he read the details. The room was silent for some twenty minutes.
"This changes everything. If the Royal Navy and the Americans have this, they could see us coming."
"Exactly. We even tried to design countermea-sures to the acoustic daylight technology for the Severodvinsk modifications. We've got a system that makes the image from a Severodvinsk sub look like an indistinct shape, a school of fish. Trouble is, it shows up as a huge school of fish. It would arouse suspicion. Welcome to the new era in undersea technology."
"So, what do we do now?" he asked.
"Come with me," she said.
It took an electronic card key for the elevator to stop at the forty-third floor. When the door rolled open, Novskoyy found himself in a high bay area crowded with the sort of crawl-through mazes and
tunnels typically found in a children's amusement area. Suhkhula stood next to him. For the first time in hours he forgot the woman, no longer smelling her perfume, no longer sensing her nearness, no longer wondering how she would look without her suit. Immediately in front of him was a chimpanzee wearing a surgical hairnet.
Making the scene surreal was that the animal bowed deeply at the waist. As he did, Novskoyy noticed a wire resembling a stereo speaker cord coming out of his skull. A bandage covered the spot where the cord entered. He straightened up and held out his paw to Novskoyy. When Novskoyy stared at him dumbly, the chimp reached over for Novskoyy's palm and shook it. Then he turned to a small table, picked up a box of cigarettes, withdrew one, and lit it, puffing smoke at the ceiling.
Novskoyy turned to Suhkhula, an eyebrow raised.
The chimp tamped out the cigarette and motioned them to follow him. Novskoyy followed Suhkhula and the animal behind the jungle gyms and puzzles to a dimly lit alcove where a large horizontal cylindrical glass or plastic tank filled with blue liquid lay surrounded by equipment consoles. Inside the tank a man in a pressure suit floated, his arms and legs limpy drifting in the liquid. His head was inside a bulky equipment box, the box crowded with hoses and cables.
"The chimpanzee is being controlled by the man in the tank. The cord going into the chimp's skull is a signal wire terminating deep within the animal's brain. The other end goes to the console, which is
an interface computer feeding the animal signals from the human controller. The controller, a senior engineer and designer named Emil Toricelli, also has had a surgical alteration to accept the interface module of the computer in several lobes of his brain, and the interface connection ties him into the console computer. The controller and the consoles can make the monkey do anything physically possible for the animal. Give the chimp an order."
Novskoyy was fascinated. He had read about advances in brain surgery, but nothing like this.
"Run in place," he said to the chimp.
The chimpanzee immediately began running in place.
"Smile," Novskoyy said.
The monkey grinned.
"Jump up and down." The chimp obeyed. Novskoyy smirked. "Now stop. Go over and give Suhk-hula a kiss."
Amazingly, the Chinese woman went to one knee and allowed the creature to smack her on the lips. She touched its face, then stood, a sad look on her face.
"Come with me," she said. They walked back to the elevator and returned to her office. Novskoyy sensed that there was something wrong. The idea of mental control of a lower mammal seemed so strange to Novskoyy that he barely noticed the change in Suhkhula's mood. Back in her office, he paced the room, trying to connect her previous speech with the chimp, and finally realizing how upset she seemed to be.
"What's the matter?" he asked her, still in a state of wonder about human control of an animal.
"The experiment," she said. "I love animals, all animals."
"And? It doesn't seem to hurt the chimp."
"It hurts him, all right," she said. "When the cord is connected, the personality of the animal lingers in the background, with the consciousness of the controller pushing it aside. But when the cord is disconnected at the end of the event or trial or mission, the animal dies. It dies in horrible agony, as if its brain were set on fire. I can barely talk about it."
Suhkhula looked down at the carpet for a moment while Novskoyy looked at her, unable to repress his attraction to her.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine," she said. "I feel like an idiot, but I've just always had this thing about animals. I can't stand to see them hurt. But this research is necessary for what you're doing."
"Why?"
"Because the only way we will be able to defeat acoustic daylight imaging sets is with biological systems."
"You're going to use the monkey to sink the ships coming out of Saudi Arabia?"
Suhkhula stared at him, then broke into a smile. "No, not quite. Dolphins."
"Oh, God," Novskoyy said in disgust. "Not this. I spent uncountable wasted hours in briefings about dolphin combat systems in my Northern Fleet days. It's ridiculous."
"That was obviously before we could control their motions with the central nervous system extender."
"It doesn't matter," Novskoyy said flatly. "A dolphin, no matter how well trained, no matter even if it is controlled as that monkey was, can't act as a combat system. They've got no hands, no way to manipulate things. Even if dolphins don't show up on acoustic daylight—"
"Oh, they show up, all right, but they are detected as dolphins and disregarded."
"Fine. They attract no attention on ac
oustic daylight sonar sets, but their mines would."
"No, Al. We'll use SG-1 explosives."
"And that means what, exactly?"
"Acoustic daylight sees metal objects and air-filled objects immediately. Any difference in density causes ocean noise to bounce or focus. But an object with the same density as water—that is, the same specific gravity—is invisible when viewed with acoustic daylight. Specific gravity is the ratio of a substance's density to the density of water. So SG-1 means the same density as water. We've got explosives that have the same weight and density as water, and we'll use them to blow up the ships. The SG-1 explosives would be enclosed in a polymer bag placed on the hull of the target ship. The polymeric material of the SG-1 bag is itself the same density as water, yet watertight for short periods of time. It encases and encloses the SG-1 liquid explosive until the explosive is detonated."
"And this explosive—what is it and how much does it take to kill a ship?"
"Do you know what happens when sodium comes into contact with water?"
"Unfortunately. The early Soviet nuclear reactors for navy service were sodium-cooled. The liquid sodium is a metal, and it has excellent thermal conductivity—ideal for transferring heat from a nuclear reactor, but explosive in contact with water. In one ship we had a leak of sodium to the bilges, which had a few hundred gallons of seawater in them—a gross procedural violation, but the dewa-tering pump was out of commission and the level alarms in the bilge were broken. The leaking sodium exploded in contact with the seawater, and the hull was breached. The ship sank and took down all hands with it. And ever since we've eliminated sodium in naval service. And that's what I know about sodium. But then, sodium is dense, which takes us back to the beginning."
"We've managed to perfect a chemical solution of sodium salts and a chemical precursor to peroxide. When a bag of binary catalyst—also near the specific gravity of water—is released into the liquid, it causes the sodium salt to react and form elemental sodium, and at the same time it causes the peroxide precursor to react and form liquid hydrogen peroxide. A second catalyst in the catalyst bag causes the polymer walls of the container to soften and dissolve. The failing walls of the container allow seawater inside, which in contact with sodium metal causes the sodium to react rapidly—an explosion, if you will—to form sodium hydroxide, and the detonating sodium acts as a fuse for the peroxide, which explodes a few milliseconds later."
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