Rockets' Red Glare

by Greg Dinallo

  Deschin slipped on his glasses, and leaned close to the painting, examining the spot where Churcher’s fingernail was now digging into the paint.

  “Very, very astute,” he said, his face still close to the textured surface. He straightened, and peered over the tops of his glasses with a professorial air. “You’re overreacting, Theo. Really. In spite of what we’d all like to believe, Van Gogh was human. He made mistakes, and he fixed them. We all do.”

  “Fine,” Churcher retorted. “How do you propose to fix this one?”

  Deschin inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then filled the compartment with smoke. “I’m afraid you’re forgetting a most famous American proverb, Theodor. Now how does it go?” he wondered, feigning an effort to recall it. “Ah, yes,” he resumed. “ ‘Don’t fix something that isn’t broken.’ You’re familiar with it. No?”

  Churcher seethed, lifted the painting with both hands, and smashed it over the back of a chair. The canvas shredded. The frame splintered.

  The four Russians flinched.

  Deschin ducked to avoid a piece of the gilded wood that rocketed past his ear.

  Churcher’s cold look said, It’s broken now!

  Deschin settled and brushed flecks of paint and gold leaf from his jacket. “What do you want?” he asked in a tone intended to signify he’d had enough.

  “The originals, of course,” Churcher replied. “All of them. As we agreed a long time ago.”

  “Or?” Deschin prodded.

  “Or—like I said, I’ll be forced to take steps to even out the ante in Geneva,” Churcher replied. “Of course, should I meet a sudden and suspicious end, the director of Central Intelligence will receive, under anonymous cover, a complete set of drawings and specifications for the Kira conversion. He should be able to figure out the rest from that. I know he will. We play golf. Jake Boulton’s a very bright fellow.”

  “How?” Deschin asked coolly. “How did you get the package of drawings, Theo?”

  “I spend a lot of time in your country, Aleksei,” he replied, thinking if Deschin was shaken he was hiding it well. “I have friends there.”

  “The paintings will be a problem for me,” Deschin said flatly. “Though many works from the Hermitage and Pushkin have been shown in your country recently, I’ve managed to withold ‘your’s’ from those exhibitions. But eventually I’ll be forced to include them; and they’ll be exposed to scrutiny by international experts. So you see, Theo, we can’t very well give you the originals and send fakes. There’s no other way to resolve this?” he concluded, his tone now more pleading than demanding.

  “The paintings were the only reason I got into this. You know that. There’s nothing else you people have that I want or can’t buy,” Churcher replied. “I mean, we have an agreement. And for years, more than twenty of them, I’ve kept up my end.” He’d become too hard, too emotional, he thought, and consciously shifted gears. “Look, I’m not here to rub your nose in it, Aleksei,” he said, his voice pained, that of a man not wanting to hurt a friend. “You have some problems? Take all the time you want, okay? Weeks, months, whatever. Long as when it’s all done, I come away with what I’ve been promised, just like you. Now, that’s fair, wouldn’t you say?”

  Deschin nodded contritely. “More than fair,” he admitted. A section of torn canvas had come to rest on the table in front of him. He stubbed out his cigarette in the pigment, and shook his head in dismay. “I’m sorry, Theodor,” he said.

  Gorodin knew what was coming now. They had discussed this over breakfast during the voyage from Cienfuegos. He tensed, preparing to move quickly when the signal was given, though what he was about to do was no longer to his taste. To his surprise, Uzykin signaled Beyalev instead. At that very instant, and by that simple gesture, Gorodin knew, to his delight, his days in Cuba would be over soon.

  On the flick of Uzykin’s eye, Beyalev stepped forward, pulled the 9mm Kalishnikov from his shoulder holster, and brought the steel spine of the grip down hard onto the side of Churcher’s head, just above his left ear—all in one smooth, swift motion.

  Textbook, Gorodin thought. His mind drifted back to his last kill—a puzzled young fellow in a hotel room six years ago. It was a covert assassination; what those in the trade, on the Soviet side, call a Mokrie Dela, literally, a “Wet Affair.” It had soured him terribly, and he was more than pleased to keep it his last. Often, in his sleep, Gorodin still heard the muffled crunch of Dick Nugent’s body when it landed on the concrete decking around the pool of the Americana Hotel that night in Miami.

  Churcher remained conscious just long enough for his eyes to snap open in astonishment. Then, the expression fell from his face, and the chairman of the board of Churchco Industries slumped in Beyalev’s arms.

  Deschin grimaced. Then nodded.

  Gorodin took Churcher’s wallet and removed the electronic card key.

  Beyalev lowered Churcher to the floor, and pressed the muzzle of the Kalishnikov to his temple.

  “No!” Deschin exclaimed.

  He and the captain moved with lightning speed. The captain got to Beyalev first and jammed his thumb behind the trigger, preventing him from pulling it.

  “We agreed I would seek confirmation from Moscow should a kill appear necessary!” Deschin said to Uzykin sternly. As the bodyguard of a Politburo member, Uzykin clearly outranked his KGB colleague. “Call him off!” Deschin went on. “This decision must be made at the highest level—and with the Premier’s concurrence.”

  Beyalev and the captain were still crouched over Churcher’s unconscious body, glaring at each other, hands locked about the Kalishnikov’s trigger assembly.

  Uzykin nodded to Beyalev, indicating he had deferred to Deschin.

  The captain eased somewhat, slowly removed his thumb from behind the trigger, and stood.

  Beyalev holstered the weapon.

  “Carry him forward,” the captain ordered. “We have procedures to efficiently dispose of him if Moscow so decides.”

  The others moved to take Churcher’s body.

  Deschin winced, averting his eyes, and headed down a passageway toward the communications bay.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  A wind-driven sleet slashed across Red Square into the unflinching faces of the elite Red Army Guard at sentry post no. 1—the entrance to Lenin’s Tomb.

  Premier Kaparov had been on an emotional high since he and Deschin had revealed the existence of a Soviet missile base in the Western Hemisphere to his chief negotiator. Churcher’s threat to forward drawings of the Kira to the Americans, thereby alerting them to SLOW BURN, had plunged him to the depths of depression.

  “He can’t be allowed to do this,” the Premier said bitterly.

  Pykonen, Anatoly Chagin head of GRU, Sergei Tvardovskiy head of KGB, and two Politburo members representing the military—who were gathered around the table in the Premier’s office—nodded dutifully.

  “Decades of hard work and excruciating tests of patience will be wasted,” Kaparov went on. “When I think of our efforts in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central America—” He paused, and shook his head despairingly. “For over twenty years those ventures have kept the enemies of the Soviet state chasing the elusive carrot of détente while the threat of cold war alternatives snapped at their heels, kept them busy while we established our position of nuclear superiority—and now, all for naught.”

  “And needlessly so,” Tvardovskiy said. He was a loud, repulsive fellow with capped teeth. He knew the flecks of gold atop the worn incisors reinforced his ruthless image, and left them that way. “These eventualities should have been foreseen, and safeguards developed to deal with them,” he went on. He didn’t have to say GRU, and not KGB, had been entrusted with SLOW BURN’s security. “Who knows if the situation is even salvageable now?”

  “I do,” Chagin said, with the icy stare of a paranoid stoic whose work fed his neuroses. GRU headquarters was its tabernacle. Vicious guard dogs patr
olled the grounds. Attaché cases were prohibited inside. Chagin rarely left the windowless fortress.

  While the Churchco dialysis machine cleansed Kaparov’s toxic blood, the group assessed the impact Churcher’s threat would have on the upcoming arms control negotiations if carried out. They groped desperately for a plan to counter it. But, as Kaparov feared, they found only one. The Premier left the meeting exhausted, clinging to the hope that Deschin’s rendezvous at sea with Churcher would be successful.

  That evening, in the bedroom of an apartment a short walk down a corridor from his office in the Council of Ministers building, Premier Dmitri Kaparov lay next to his wife of fifty-three years.

  The events of the previous twenty-four hours had severely drained him, but he couldn’t sleep. For hours, he had been staring at the shadows thrown across the ceiling from the lights in Red Square, thinking about SLOW BURN, and reflecting on its beginning, on those days when he and Aleksei Deschin were rising stars in the Intelligence and Cultural ministries—agencies that rarely interacted, save for the KGB’s chaperoning of creatively frustrated ballet stars.

  However, early in the spring of 1960, the two young lions were unexpectedly drawn together. An American business entrepreneur with a passion for collecting art was the catalyst.

  Theodor Churcher was in the Soviet Union on a business trip when he noticed the name Aleksei Deschin on a list of government appointments. They had worked together in the OSS during the war, and Churcher sought out the new deputy cultural minister. During a vodka-embellished reunion, replete with the telling of wartime stories, Churcher queried Deschin about the mother lode of Western art long exiled to the basements of Soviet museums. He expressed interest in quietly acquiring the masterpieces, and he would pay dearly for them—in hard American dollars. A currency which, both men knew, was highly prized by the Soviet government.

  For Deschin, it was an exciting prospect. Who would have thought that a bureaucrat in a nonstrategic agency would be able to make such a tangible contribution to his government?

  For Kaparov, the KGB “handling agent” assigned to oversee covert exchanges of paintings for cash, it was humdrum at best. Humdrum until, in a brilliant stroke, he saw the potential to alter history and, with Deschin’s assistance, hatched a bold plan.

  Kaparov audaciously proposed that the government forego the much sought-after cash, and request another form of payment. One that he knew only this American could pay. An American who, Kaparov rightly suspected, wanted the artworks badly enough to pay it. Along with Deschin and Vladimir Semichastny, KGB Chief at the time, Kaparov sold the unorthodox idea to Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and SLOW BURN was born.

  The terminally ill Premier’s recollection was marred by bitterness. He had planned that the position of unchallenged nuclear superiority would be his legacy to the Soviet people. And now he felt as if a knife had been suddenly thrust into him, with the cruelest timing imaginable. The long thin blade he visualized was slowly piercing his flesh when he heard the footsteps, the knock, and then the slow chatter of the hinge as the door opened, and his aide Vasily entered.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Premier,” he whispered.

  “It’s all right, Vasily. I’m awake.”

  “Minister Deschin is on satellite hookup, sir,” Vasily said. “Shall I bring the phone to the bed?”

  “No, no,” Kaparov replied softly. He knew what the call was about, and had been hoping it wouldn’t come. That would have meant a satisfactory agreement had been struck with Churcher. “I’ll take it in my office,” he said, thinking some decisions are not for the ears of one’s mate. He leaned across the pillow and kissed his wife on the forehead. “I will be back shortly, Pushka,” he whispered.

  “Your robe, Dmitri,” she said, awakening. “Don’t forget your robe.”

  “No, I will go stark naked,” he teased.

  He pulled his stiffened body from the bed and slipped into his robe with Vasily’s assistance. He knotted the waist tie and stepped into his slippers.

  Then, Dmitri Kaparov, General Secretary of the Communist party, Premier of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Socialist Republics, the most powerful man in all of Russia, shuffled feebly to his office to decide whether Theodor Churcher would live or die.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  The Satellite Surveillance Group at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola is housed in K Building, at the far end of the ASW Forces Command complex.

  On returning from the Foxtrot alert, Lieutenant Jon Lowell completed his watch and went directly to the heavily guarded and fenced structure. He took the steps two at a time, entered the nondescript lobby, and returned the salute of the Marine guard.

  “Corporal,” he said, in the laconic tone military officers seem to use with subordinates.

  “Morning, sir. How’re you today?” the poised youth replied.

  “Fine thanks,” Lowell said. “Heading for the TSZ.”

  This meant that Lowell sought access to the Top Secret Zone, where Anti Submarine Warfare, Satellite Surveillance, and Sound Surveillance System headquarters were housed.

  The guard examined the ID badge clipped to the right breast pocket of Lowell’s uniform. The plastic-laminated card displayed the tactical coordinator’s name, rank, serial number, squadron, and photograph. He made a notation on a clipboard, then stepped aside—giving Lowell access to a pedestal-mounted keypad and monitor linked to the base’s personnel access computer.

  Lowell entered his security clearance code.

  The screen came alive with confirming data.

  Seconds later, the steel door behind them slid open automatically.

  “Go get ’em, sir,” the guard exhorted. He was referring to the fact that all K building personnel were involved in a continuing hunt for the enemy.

  “Do my best,” Lowell replied, stepping through the doorway into the TSZ.

  Minutes later, Lowell was in the photographic library, assembling the materials he needed to pursue his hunch about the Soviet submarine’s destination.

  The walls of the room where Lowell was working were papered with photomurals of incredibly detailed, high resolution KH-11 satellite photographs. A linear network, designating latitude and longitude, was superimposed over each sat-pix, as was a pattern of tiny camera registration marks that resembled plus signs. In the lower right-hand corner, a data block spelled out date, time, navigational coordinates, satellite position, and security classification. All photographs displayed in this decorative manner had long been declassified.

  By the time Lt. Commander Arnsbarger, the Viking’s pilot, arrived, Lowell was standing at one of the long library tables. The half dozen 18” × 24” sat-pix enlargements that he had requisitioned were spread out on the white formica surface. Lowell hunched intently over an illuminated magnifier, moving it slowly over the surface of one of the photographs.

  “Well?” Arnsbarger challenged, removing his sunglasses. “Where do these Ruskie bozos go?”

  “Lowell looked up and shook his head. “Nowhere,” he said quizzically.

  Arnsbarger questioned him with a look.

  Lowell gestured to the magnifier. “Be my guest.”

  The big pilot leaned to the eyepiece. A silvery oblong shape, heading into the main ship channel from the Soviet naval base, was centered in the cross hairs of the illuminated rectangle. The Soviet captain and his first officer were clearly visible on the bridge.

  “That’s our sub,” Lowell said. “By the way, if you look real close, you can see the captain’s got a pipe jammed in his mouth.”

  Arnsbarger looked up and nodded. “Yeah,” he said expectantly.

  Lowell pointed to the data block on the sat-pix. “Sailed from port, twenty-eight January at five-thirty. Okay?”

  “I’m with you.”

  Lowell slid a second sat-pix next to the first. He set the magnifier on it and centered the cross hairs on a similar oblong shape that was entering one of the long submarine slips in the Soviet base.<
br />
  Arnsbarger leaned to the eyepiece again. “Looks like Captain ‘Pipesmoker,’ ” he said, still looking into the magnifier.

  “Right. Same sub,” Lowell replied. “Returned to port, twenty-eight January at twenty-three forty-five hours,” he added, indicating the data block.

  “Elapsed time, round-trip, seventeen hours fifteen minutes,” Arnsbarger calculated, straightening from the eyepiece.

  “Right again,” Lowell said. “Figuring an average speed of twenty-five to thirty knots—nine hours out, nine back, and no drift time, the outer mark is—”

  “Highly unlikely in that tub,” Arnsbarger interjected.

  “That’s my point,” Lowell resumed. “The outer mark is within a two-hundred-fifty-mile radius of port.”

  “Which is nowhere,” Arnsbarger said.

  “Damn near,” Lowell said thoughtfully.

  He moved a few steps down the table to where he had unrolled a chart of Gulf and Caribbean waters. A navigator’s drafting compass lay next to it. Arnsbarger watched intently as Lowell placed the pinpoint of the instrument at zero on the scale of nautical miles. He spun the adjustment wheel until the graphite point reached the two-hundred-fifty-mile mark. Then he placed the point of the compass at Cienfuegos and drew a scaled two-hundred-fifty-mile radius circle. The line cut through the Florida peninsula at Palm Beach and barely ticked Mexico’s Yucatan.

  “Well, we know they didn’t torpedo the Boom-Boom Room at the Fountainbleu,” Arnsbarger cracked. “What about Cotoche or Cozumel here?” he asked, indicating the Yucatan area.

  Lowell shook no emphatically. “I checked every pertinent sat-pix,” he replied. “The sub never showed in either port. Besides, considering the elapsed time, that’d really be stretching its range.”

  Arnsbarger shrugged and studied the map. “Maybe the guys with the white powder meet ol’ Pipesmoker halfway,” he said facetiously.