by Larry Bond
“Stoy!” Vaslev shouted, so upset that he had to deliberately recall the English word, and finally repeated, “Stop!” He looked over at his two colleagues. Their expressions were unreadable. They were both looking over to him, perhaps for guidance. He gestured for them to remain silent, and gathered his thoughts.
Vaslev stood, and said, “The enormity of this act is almost overwhelming. The American navy entered Russian waters and stole this object…”
Hardy interrupted, “Actually we took two, this one, and another still in its case. Aren’t you even interested in what they are?”
“They are obviously property of the Russian government,” Vaslev answered immediately. After a moment’s pause, he added, “This confession, years after the fact, does not alter the seriousness of this violation of our territory…”
“We didn’t ask you here to confess anything, Mr. Ambassador.” Secretary Lloyd’s voice overrode Vaslev’s speech. “You haven’t even asked what Soviet state property we stole. We recovered two reentry vehicles for a Russian RT-21 Pioneer missile, each fitted with a 150-kiloton thermonuclear warhead. The RT-21s were medium-range ballistic missiles that were supposed to have all been withdrawn under the INF treaty in 1987. Observers watched the destruction of the missiles and the disassembly of all the warheads, at least all those reported under the treaty. Can you explain where these came from?”
Vaslev, surprised by Lloyd’s speech and then its sternly delivered content, appeared genuinely confused, but said, “I have no information about this barge or alleged warheads. These are serious charges. My country has always lived up to the letter of every international treaty, and…”
Lloyd’s tone sharpened. “Mr. Ambassador, I’m not interested in the party line. We are ready to hold a press conference and wheel both bombs out in front of whoever wants to see them. I’m sure the media would be very interested in this.”
Vaslev held up his hands. “What can I say, Secretary Lloyd? Again, I have no knowledge of this. I’ll of course contact my government as soon as I return to the embassy.”
“You can also tell your government that the exterior of the barge has some marine growth, but hadn’t been in the water more than ten years. Was your government deliberately concealing nuclear warheads, in violation of the INF treaty, since at least the mid-nineties?”
Vaslev sat. After a brief pause the ambassador ventured, “The ocean is not typically used for storing anything. Since you found these objects in the same area as radioactive items that had been discarded, perhaps these were also discarded.” Vaslev was warming up to the idea. “These may be warheads that are flawed, or defective and were dumped by the old government.”
Hardy shook his head. “Our examination of the two devices showed them to be fully functional, ready for installation on the warhead bus of a ballistic missile. And you forget the marine growth…”
Vaslev waved his hand to brush the argument aside. “Seaweed is not proof of anything.”
Hardy nodded to Davis, who pressed a key, and a new image appeared on the screen. “Then how about an acoustic sensor, fixed to the seabed near the barge, and placed at the same time? Somebody was keeping watch on those nuclear weapons.”
The ambassador glanced over to Mishin, who was studying the image carefully. He looked at Vaslev and nodded his head slightly. He recognized it. In Russian, he reported, “It is a standard type of fixed acoustic sensor.”
The implications and consequences of this discovery were beginning to take shape in Vaslev’s mind. But he needed to think …
“Why are you telling us this now, after so many years?” It was an honest question, the first the ambassador had asked. It was intended to buy time, but he was curious.
Hardy replied quickly, “Because there is a high probability that the weapon detonated in Kashmir came from this source.”
Vaslev’s thoughts struggled to follow several tracks at once. Foremost was protecting Russian interests. Second was trying to understand the Americans’ intent. Consideration of the actual facts being presented came third and last. But the American’s statement brought everything to a sudden halt.
Stunned, the ambassador blinked, then blinked again. Almost automatically, with reflexes trained by years of diplomatic service, he asked, “What proof do you have of this?”
Hardy handed the Russians two documents. “The first one is an analysis of the fallout and soil samples from the Kashmir explosion. It’s more detailed than the one released to the public last week. The second is our analysis of the reentry vehicles’ fissile material. The isotope ratios of the plutonium in all three cases are identical. The measured size of the explosion also matched the warheads’ rated yield—one hundred and fifty kilotons.”
Vaslev studied the tables on the marked pages. His spoken English was good, but he sometimes had trouble with the Roman alphabet. Now the words might as well have been printed in Martian. But numbers were the same in both languages, and so were the chemical symbols for uranium and plutonium.
Lloyd, still standing nearby, waited until Vaslev had looked at both analyses and handed them to Mishin, then sat down next to the ambassador. “Mr. Ambassador, as the representative of the United States, I am speaking to the representative of the Russian Federation. There is or was a large cache of nuclear warheads in your northern waters. Whether they were put there at the orders of your highest leaders, or by some faction within your government, one of those weapons has now exploded, causing exactly the type of destruction its designers intended.
“The United States is deeply concerned that the Russian government has lost control of these weapons, indeed if they ever had control. They present a grave danger, not just to Russia, but the entire world. We will give you every scrap of information we have about them, but the trail leads back inside Russia, and your country must take the lead in tracking them down.”
Vaslev sighed, not in surrender, but in the realization that Russia was indeed in grave, perhaps mortal danger. He truly did not know anything about the barge the Americans described. That was no surprise in a country that still told one only what was needed to do one’s work, and sometimes not even that. And who knew what secrets had been fed into the communist regime’s shredders before they lost power?
Others would make sure the Americans’ information was authentic, but for the moment, he would assume they were telling the truth. He couldn’t imagine this was some sort of deception.
“All right,” Vaslev announced, “I will pass all this information on to my superiors with the strongest possible endorsement. What they will do with it, or what actions they will take, I cannot say.”
“We would hope that in the spirit of cooperation, and given our openness in supplying such detailed information to your government, we can continue to work together to quickly resolve this, before there is another catastrophe.” Lloyd’s words were couched in diplomatic terminology, but his request was sincere.
“I can make no guarantees about that, either. Those decisions will be made by others.”
“You should also tell your government, that given the great urgency and the great danger of this situation, if their investigations are not successful, we will quickly broaden our investigation to include other governments, and possibly even the public. Everyone in the world is in danger until these weapons are found and the persons involved are stopped. One could argue that the world needs to be told.”
It was a credible threat. The Americans had already revealed what they knew to their adversary. Telling their friends or the public would cost them little. Vaslev wondered which revelation would cause Russia greater problems: that the Soviet regime apparently violated a nuclear treaty, that the Russian government had covered it up, or that it had now lost control of at least one of the weapons.
And who had them now? He shivered at the thought of the Chechens or some Muslim group, and there were many inside Russia, possessing such a weapon. And there were nationalists in Georgia and some of the “Stans” who woul
d love to strike at their Russian neighbor.
“There is one more piece of information for you, a possible lead for your investigators.”
“Lead?” Vaslev asked, puzzled by the word.
“Clue,” Lloyd explained. “A name: Evgeni Orlav. A Russian national. This individual is working in India as part of the refit of the Indian submarine Chakra.”
“And the nature of his involvement?” Vaslev asked.
Lloyd sighed. “We don’t know. But information from a source in the shipyard says his actions have been suspicious since the Kashmir explosion.”
The ambassador looked over at Zykov, who was taking notes. The official looked up and asked, “May we interview this source?”
“No,” said Lloyd firmly. “Not now. Possibly later.”
So the Americans still wanted to keep some things secret. Still, intelligence shouldn’t have any trouble locating this man and putting him under surveillance.
Captain Mishin spoke up. “I have a question. With the ambassador’s permission, it is a matter related to the barge.”
Vaslev nodded.
“Could you please put the map back up on the screen?”
Davis typed for a moment, and the waters of northern Russia reappeared.
Mishin studied it for a moment before nodding slightly, as if satisfied. His expression became very solemn. “In the spring of 2005, I was a junior officer assigned to staff duty in Murmansk, at the Northern Fleet headquarters. There was an incident in that same area, a pursuit of what was reported as a foreign submarine in our waters. I remember coming on duty to find our fleet actively pursuing a submarine contact as it tried to escape. It was general mobilization,” he recalled. “We were on a war footing.”
He’d been speaking to the entire group, but now he turned to face Hardy directly, confronting him. “Was that submarine USS Memphis?”
Hardy replied, “We arrived at our patrol area on May twenty-third, and discovered the barge on June eleventh.”
Mishin’s face hardened. “The dates agree. One of the units pursuing the foreign submarine—Memphis,” he corrected himself, “was the submarine Gepard. After she reported detecting a distant hydroacoustic contact, on June fourteenth, she was never heard from again.”
The naval officer stood and walked to the screen. He picked up a pointer and tapped the chart. “The next day, we discovered debris here, and her wreckage, containing the seventy-three men who served on her, was located later that month.
“Her loss was a tremendous blow to the fleet, as well as to the wives and mothers whose men never returned. It’s long been suspected that she was sunk in battle. Is that what happened?”
Vaslev was surprised by Mishin’s intensity, but it was understandable. Gepard had been the newest submarine in the fleet in 2005, and her loss, following that of Kursk, had dealt a huge blow to the Russian submarine arm’s morale.
Hardy said, “I can provide a more detailed account later, if you wish and my government allows it.” Hardy walked over and stood near Mishin, facing the naval officer. “Late on the fourteenth, we’d crossed the sixty-eighth parallel heading north. Memphis had been damaged by depth charges dropped on us during the pursuit, so we were not as quiet as we might have been. Gepard was waiting, in front of us, and fired two torpedoes only moments after we detected her presence. I maneuvered and dropped countermeasures, and managed to avoid those weapons. We both continued to maneuver, quite violently, and more countermeasures were dropped, by both submarines. She fired again, another pair of torpedoes, but I was able to evade them with the use of a mobile decoy.
“She went active and launched a third salvo of two torpedoes. Because of our maneuvers and the number of countermeasures in the water, I believe the guidance wires on her torpedoes may have been broken. The third pair of weapons was also decoyed away from me, but Gepard’s radical maneuvering put her in the path of the torpedoes. My sonarmen heard their seekers shift to a range-gating scale, followed by an explosion and breaking-up noises.”
Vaslev asked Mishin in Russian, “What does ‘range-gating scale’ mean?”
The Russian submariner explained, “He means that the torpedoes—our weapons—detected Gepard and began pinging more rapidly. All acoustic homing torpedoes do that when they attack. It gives them more precise bearing and range information.”
“So she was sunk by her own torpedoes? Is such a thing possible?”
Still answering in Russian, Mishin said, “Normally, no. There are circuits in torpedoes specifically designed to prevent that from happening. But in a close-range, maneuvering situation, with the guidance wires cut…” He shrugged.
Vaslev couldn’t believe that a Russian submarine had been lost to its own weapons. Switching to English, he asked Hardy, “Did you fire at Gepard?”
Hardy quickly replied with a shake of his head, “Absolutely not, Mr. Ambassador. One of my decoys was launched in that direction, but I didn’t launch a torpedo.”
“Even after you were fired on.”
“Truth be told, because of the damage my boat had received, I was incapable of firing back, even if I wanted to. Besides, we were in international waters, Mr. Ambassador. I could understand why the Russian units fired on us when we were close to your coast. The American term would be ‘hot pursuit.’ But Gepard’s attack, that far away, shocked us, and it is only our good fortune that we weren’t sunk.”
“And Gepard’s misfortune.” Vaslev replied acidly.
Mishin leaned over and spoke in Russian a little more softly than last time. “When they investigated the wreck of Gepard, they found pieces of Russian USET-80 torpedoes outside the hull, on the seafloor. The inner hull near the first compartment, where the torpedoes were stored, was flooded, but largely intact.”
“Couldn’t those torpedoes be the ones found outside of Gepard?”
“No, sir. Those would be intact. In this case, the weapons were in pieces. The largest were of the propulsion section, and is consistent with a warhead that had detonated. As much as I want to blame the Americans for her loss, they may not be at fault.”
Mishin shifted to English and said, “For all this time, the families of those seventy-three men have grieved, ignorant of the reasons behind her loss. It’s hard to accept that it was simply ‘bad luck.’”
“Although I’ve omitted many details, my summary is complete. Memphis made no attempt to sink your submarine, only to escape. My crew and I have always regretted being involved in any way, even unwillingly, in Gepard’s loss. They were our adversaries, but also submariners, and we understood the risks they took.”
Lloyd spoke up. “Gepard’s captain fired not just one, or two, but three salvoes of torpedoes at Memphis in rapid succession. Did he act on his own? Does a Russian submarine commander have that kind of authority?” He was looking straight at Vaslev, but Mishin answered the question.
“After the incident, Admiral Yuri Kirichenko, the Northern Fleet commander, was court-martialed for ordering the pursuit, and was judged responsible for Gepard’s loss.”
The ambassador felt a flash of irritation with his naval attaché, but understood his desire to protect the reputation of a fellow submarine officer. And it wasn’t classified information. The findings of the court had been given a lot of coverage in the press. “Captain First Rank Mishin is correct,” he said.
“Based on the actions of your navy, we had to assume that the warheads had been deliberately hidden by the Russian government, and decided not to make the matter public, or bring it to the attention of Russian officials, without finding out more information. To date, our investigations have been completely unsuccessful, because every clue we have led straight into Russia.”
Vaslev reasoned, “So if there had never been an explosion in Kashmir, you never would have told us.”
“Never is a long time, Mr. Ambassador, but no, we would not be having this meeting now.”
The ambassador sighed. “This will be a long report to Moscow. Courtesy requires me to thank
you for sharing this information with us, but only time will tell if I should be grateful.”
Lloyd said, “I’d like to arrange a time for a follow-up meeting, so that we can learn what you have found out. That will likely assist our investigations.”
Vaslev sounded uncertain. “Perhaps in a week or so…”
“There could be another explosion at any time, Mr. Ambassador. I was thinking more like forty-eight hours.”
“Please, Mr. Secretary. I am sure that after they read my report, I will be recalled for consultations. Once I get them to understand that this is not a joke, it will trigger vigorous debate, and then investigations. Certainly my government will make no major decision until they have a better understanding of the situation.”
Lloyd pressed his point. “We cannot know what is happening right now. I must insist that any information you discover be shared with my government immediately. We are willing to keep this matter private for the time being, but only as long as it assists your investigation.”
* * *
The meeting ended, and the ambassador shook hands with Lloyd; then Ron Davis handed Vaslev a bundle of documents. A little to one side, Hardy shook hands with Mishin, and they exchanged a few words. Lloyd was curious, but wouldn’t ask. If there was anything Hardy needed to share, the senator would tell them.
Vice President Randall left immediately after that, thanking the other three for their good work.
Before Hardy left, Lloyd asked him, “Ready for that ambassadorship yet?”
The submariner quickly shook his head. “Irate voters are enough for me. But why did you invite Zykov? Mishin made sense, considering the topic. But why the SVR station chief?”
“Because Vaslev and the political leadership may know nothing about the barge,” Lloyd answered. “The three of them represented the major power blocks in Russia: political, military, and intelligence.” Lloyd shrugged. “All three now know what we know. One of those groups has to know something. And in the meantime, we can work with what we have: the name ‘Evgeni Orlav.’”
