Rockets' Red Glare

by Greg Dinallo

  “It’s a bunch of chips about that big,” Lowell said, indicating Scofield’s Zippo. “It reduces the sound waves to digitized pulses, cuts negative feedback to zero, and separates them into a dozen frequency ranges. We can listen to each range by itself.”

  “Kind of like the graphic equalizer on a stereo.”

  Lowell nodded, and stabbed a finger at a row of buttons on the console in front of Scofield. “Give me the high end first,” he said decisively. If he was right, it would be the only frequency range he’d need.

  “Yes, sir. And thanks, I’ll remember that,” Scofield said, pushing the button labeled 16/40 kHz, rerouting the hydrotape data through the digitizer that filtered out all but the highest frequencies.

  The sound in Lowell’s headphones changed dramatically. The low rumble of the ship’s power plant dropped out, as did the swishing throb of a passing school of barracuda, leaving the high frequency whine of propeller cavitation, the noise made by the ship’s blades carving a hole in the water. The singsong rhythm of the whine he’d isolated was all the proof Lowell needed that the vessel was pushing twin screws.

  “That’s the one,” he said triumphantly.

  Lowell removed his headphones, scooped up the phone that hung from one side of the console, and punched out Arnsbarger’s number.

  The phone rang several times before Arnsbarger lifted his head from the pillow. “Cissy? Cissy, get that will you?” he growled, before realizing that she was in the shower and her son had already left for school. Finally, he crawled out from beneath the bedding and picked it up. “Yeah—” he mumbled in a sleepy voice.

  “Rise and shine, big fella!” Lowell hooted.

  “Christ,” Arnsbarger replied, wincing. “Won’t be noon for a couple of hours. What the hell’s going on?”

  “I nailed her!” Lowell blurted excitedly.

  “Great. Glad to hear you’re not a virgin anymore, son. Now if you don’t mind—”

  “I’m talking about our mystery ship,” Lowell interrupted, laughing. “We just tracked down her acoustic signature.”

  “Oh,” said Arnsbarger, suddenly coming to life. “Way to go. I sure to hell wished it’d taken you a couple of hours longer. On my way.”

  In the forty-five minutes it took Arnsbarger to shower, dress, and drive to the base, Lowell and Scofield refined the distinction between frequencies, and digitally isolated the acoustic signature of each of the ship’s propellers.

  When Arnsbarger entered, they had already made separate tracks of each cavitation whine, and Lowell was running them through the graphic analyzer.

  Two linear patterns moved horizontally across the console’s video screen. Each of the parallel waves peaked and valleyed about a centerline, like an electrocardiogram.

  “What do you have up there?” Arnsbarger rasped, looking better than he sounded. “A couple of whales getting it on?”

  “Yeah,” Lowell chuckled. “You’re looking at the hottest pair of twin screws this side of Cienfuegos.”

  “Separated them out, huh?”

  “It was easy. Look at that.”

  Lowell tapped the screen, indicating the top signature pattern. It was decidedly more frenetic than the lower.

  “Hard to port,” he went on. “Starboard screw is turning almost half again as many revs. Frequency’s more than ten killies lower.”

  “Well, let’s find out if that John Hancock has a match,” Arnsbarger replied. “What’re we waiting for, anyway?”

  “For your head to clear,” Lowell cracked.

  “Ship’ll be a pile of scrap in a Yokohama yard before that happens.”

  “So will you if you don’t give it a night off once in a while.”

  “You’re starting to sound just like Cissy,” Arnsbarger teased. “But she’s a lot easier to look at. I mean, I could’ve stayed home and heard that.”

  “Yeah, but not this,” Lowell replied.

  He removed his headphones and tossed them to Arnsbarger, who slipped them on. Then Lowell swiveled to the console’s keyboard and encoded:

  LOG:CX-MP/AC:SIG:LIB-COMP:ANA/2-TRK:SRCH

  This linked the computer in Lowell’s console to the Cray X-MP in the control room, instructed it to access the acoustic signature library, and run a comparative analysis program on the two-track specimen signature Lowell had prepared.

  “Okay. Here we go,” he announced, pushing a button that transmitted the data and started the search and match process.

  Operating at speeds in excess of one billion instructions per second, the supercomputer compared the specimen acoustic signature with the hundreds of thousands on file. In the time it took Scofield to stub out a cigarette, pull another from his pack, and light it, the Cray had found a match. The laser printer tied in to Lowell’s computer came to life:

  P103612PMAR

  ASW PENSACOLA

  ACSIG COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS REPORT 71938647

  VESSEL IDENTIFIED AS: VLCC KIRA

  CLASSIFICATION: SUPERTANKER TWIN SCREWS

  DISPLACEMENT: 145,000 TONS

  CARGO: 125,000 TONS

  MANUFACTURER: MITSUI YARDS YOKOHAMA JAPAN MAY59

  MOTHBALLED: PIROS FINLAND DEC68 FEB72

  REOUTFITTED: VASIL’YEVSKIY YARDS LENINGRAD USSR

  REGISTRY: REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA 26JUL73

  OWNER: LEASEHOLD SHIPPING LTD HAVANA CUBA

  Lowell tore the page from the printer, and the three men huddled scanning the data.

  Arnsbarger whistled.

  Scofield nodded in agreement.

  Lowell just smiled.

  All eyes were on the third line from the bottom. The connection to Boulton’s KIQ directive was strong. They went to the ranking ASW intelligence officer in K building immediately. Within an hour, copies of the acoustic signature report on the Kira, the KH-11 recon photographs, and a log listing the sightings of the Soviet submarine that provoked their investigation had been transmitted, via a secure communications link, to Boulton at Langley. In minutes, the best of the CIA’s analytical minds were focused on the Kira.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The weather in Rome had cleared when Melanie Winslow’s flight from New York landed later that same morning. She cleared customs and hurried to a bank of public telephones. Her pulse rate soared as she pulled the Rome directory from its hanger, opened it to the Ds, and frantically turned the pages to the heading DES. She ran her finger down the column of names—Descano, Descenta, Descilare. The names jumped from Desc-e to Desc-i. Not a single Desc-h. No Deschin, not a one. Melanie let out a long breath, and admonished herself for believing, even for a moment, that it might be this easy.

  She took a taxi into the city and checked into the Gregoriana, a tiny hotel that lies hidden just east of the Spanish Steps on a narrow residential street after which it is named. Its fourteen cozy rooms were coveted by those in the arts who were fond of their intimacy and the bright palette used in their decor. Melanie had stayed here once, years ago, while performing with a dance company at Teatro dell’ Opera. She was pleased to find the hotel’s ambience intact on her return.

  She showered quickly, slipped into jeans, turtleneck, and leather bomber jacket, and took a taxi to the Piazza Cavour, where she rented a motor scooter.

  An attendant in coveralls with SCOOT-A-LONG embroidered on the breast pocket gassed the bright green Motobecane, and gave Melanie a map of the city.

  “My last one. I saved it just for you,” he said flirtatiously.

  “Thanks,” Melanie replied with a smile. She settled on the scooter and, handling the controls with familiarity, started the engine, prompting the attendant to skip his orientation speech. “Maybe you can tell me how to get to the State Archives?” she asked.

  “Ah, si, the Sapienza. You want the most direct route? Or the one where the streets have cobblestones?” he asked with a lascivious smile.

  “I can see it’s time for me to be scooting along,” she said sharply. She pushed the scooter off its stand, po
pped the clutch, and accelerated onto Via Triboniano, which borders the west side of the piazza.

  The attendant’s remark got her thinking about the first time she had rented a scooter in Italy. She was in Florence and observed to an English painter she had met that “The young women seem so spirited, so—”

  “Fulfilled,” he offered somewhat smugly.

  “Exactly,” she said. “They’ve been liberated. They have jobs, incomes, careers.”

  “And motor scooters,” he added with an enigmatic smile. “They have motor scooters.”

  Melanie didn’t understand.

  Hze teased her mercilessly, and refused to explain, prompting her to rent one. And then she understood: the cobblestone streets, the steady vibration, the stimulating sensation building. As a teenager, she’d made a similar discovery galloping bareback across the New Hampshire countryside on her chestnut colt.

  The airy dome of Capella di Sant’Ivo—the fourteenth-century church in Palazzo di Sapienza where Pope Boniface VIII, a Machiavellian churchman who wielded the power of his office with unscrupulous abandon, founded the University of Rome—shimmered in the afternoon light as Melanie approached on her scooter.

  The state-funded institution, directly across the Tiber from the Vatican, bestows degrees in the full range of arts and sciences. In 1935, the University was awarded modern accredition and moved to more spacious quarters. Nevertheless, records are still kept at the Sapienza, which now houses the State Archives.

  The courtyard between the two massive wings was clogged with traffic as Melanie cruised the grounds on the motor scooter in search of the records office. The ride and the cold air had reddened her complexion and lifted her spirits.

  A sign that read UNIVERSITA L’UFFICIO REGISTRAZIONE got her attention. She backed off the throttle and steered the Motobecane into a parking area that looked like a motor scooter convention. She hurried up the steps of the administration building and, after a few wrong turns in the maze of corridors, found the Records Office.

  The room had Renaissance proportions and had once been a refrectory. Beneath the vaulted ceiling, its plaster darkened from centuries of burning tallow, stood several cluttered desks, rows of file cabinets, and a modern glass enclosure that created a private space for the supervisor.

  Melanie paused to evaluate the student clerks behind the service counter, and approached the one she judged had the most easygoing nature of the three.

  The young fellow looked up from the file cards he was methodically alphabetizing.

  “Prego signora?” he said.

  “Si,” she replied. “Parla inglese, perfavore? You speak English?”

  He held his thumb and forefinger about a half inch apart. “Capisco un po’—I think,” he replied, breaking into the friendly smile she had anticipated.

  Melanie smiled back, relieved. “I’m trying to find someone,” she said slowly in a louder than normal voice, making the assumption—for whatever reason most people do—that comprehension increases with volume. “He was a student here in the late thirties.”

  “Thirties?” the clerk exclaimed.

  He wasn’t a day over nineteen, and as far as he was concerned, she could just as well have said 1300s.

  “Yes, the years just prior to the war. His name’s Deschin. Aleksei Deschin.”

  Melanie took a piece of paper and pencil from the counter, and began neatly printing the name.

  In the rows of gray steel cabinets behind them, another clerk was filing document folders that were in a wheeled cart. Marco Profetta had no reason to pay attention to their conversation—not until he heard Melanie say, “Deschin.” His eyes flickered at the first mention. He mused when she repeated it, then coolly resumed his filing chores, covering his reaction.

  Melanie finished writing Deschin’s name on the slip of paper, and handed it to the clerk.

  He stared at it blankly for a moment.

  “You do have records that go back that far, don’t you?” she prompted optimistically.

  The young clerk shrugged, and splayed his hands.

  “Can you find out? Is there someone who might—”

  “Aspetti un momento,” he said, interrupting her. He turned from Melanie, crossed the room, and entered the glass enclosure. A slim, fashionably attired woman was working at a computer terminal.

  Melanie couldn’t hear what was being said. But she could see the clerk explaining, and the woman responding with a pained expression, and making quick little negative movements with her head. Melanie decided it was time to be more assertive, and walked around the counter to the glass enclosure.

  “Tell her I’m trying to find my father,” she said, addressing the clerk. “Tell her it’s very important.”

  The supervisor looked up with a slightly piqued expression. “I’m sorry, but we can’t accommodate you,” she replied coolly, in excellent English. “Current records are on the computer. Those from recent years, though inactive, are filed here as you can see. But anything from before the war—” she let the sentence trail off, shaking no with the same quick movement of her head she had used with the clerk, then resumed, “—they would be almost impossible to retrieve.”

  “But you do have them,” Melanie said, undaunted.

  “Some,” the supervisor reluctantly admitted. “But it could take days, even weeks, in the archives just to find the proper volume. If it wasn’t destroyed in the war. I’d like to help you, but—”

  “Then please hear me out,” Melanie interrupted in a desperate voice. “The only thing I know about my father is that he was a student here. That and his name. Maybe the records were destroyed in the war. Maybe he was destroyed in it,” she added glumly. “Or maybe he fell out of bed twenty years ago and broke his neck. I don’t know. Look, I realize the chances of finding him are pretty slim. But I have to try. I have to find out as much about him as I can. And I have nowhere else to start. Nowhere. You’re all I’ve got. I’d appreciate whatever help you can give me.”

  The supervisor was visibly touched, her expression more sympathetic now. “Perhaps Gianni can find the records for you,” she said, shifting her look to the clerk.

  “I have class,” he said, glad to have an excuse to avoid the dank, musty caverns beneath the Sapienza. He turned to Melanie, and lifted a shoulder in an apologetic shrug. “Ciao, Signora,” he said as he left.

  Melanie thought for a moment, then brightened with an idea. “Suppose I look for them?” she said, turning back to the supervisor. “If the records are in the archives, I’ll find them, believe me. I don’t care how long it takes. Would that be okay?”

  The supervisor considered the suggestion for a moment, and smiled. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Thank you. Really, I can’t tell you what this means to me,” Melanie said.

  “There is a form you must fill out first,” the supervisor said, reverting to a more businesslike manner. “We are very cautious about releasing data on our alumni, and to whom.”

  She got up from her chair, and stepped to the opening in the glass enclosure.

  “Marco?” she called out to the clerk who was still filing documents in the rows of steel cabinets. “Marco, venga qui?”

  Marco didn’t look up from the folders in the cart immediately. When he did, he pointed to himself, indicating he was uncertain she was addressing him.

  “Si, Marco,” she replied. “E mi porta un forma requisizioni?”

  He closed the file drawer and came toward them in a floating saunter, using an effeminate flick of his wrist to take an information request card from the counter on the way. He had heard her call him the first time, but feigned he hadn’t. It was preferable that they didn’t know he’d been observing them from the moment he overheard Melanie say, “Deschin, Aleksei Deschin.”

  The name didn’t mean anything to the clerk or the supervisor. They had no reason to know the name of the Soviet minister of culture.

  But Marco Profetta did. To him it meant money.

  * * * * *
*

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The Maserati was traveling fast on the S201 Autostrada toward the city when the rain let up and the skies started to brighten.

  To Andrew’s relief, no deadly gas had filled the rear compartment, and no attempt had been made to abduct him. The turn in the weather prompted him to go to Piazza dei Siena—the outdoor amphitheater in the Borghese Gardens where the horse show would be held—prior to checking in at his hotel.

  Fausto adjusted his course, left the S201, cutting through the Trastavere District to Ponte Garibaldi. He crossed to the east bank of the Tiber, and headed north on the Lungotevere, the broad boulevard that snakes past the townhouses fronting the river. At Ponte Cavour, he angled into Via Ripetta, and continued to Piazza Del Popouli, just west of their new destination. There, the Maserati’s progress came to an abrupt halt. The piazza was congested with traffic. Hundreds of vehicles were gridlocked about the Hellenic obelisk at its center.

  Andrew lowered the window for a better view of the limestone needle that split a backdrop of evergreens.

  The sharp crack of a gunshot rang out behind him.

  He spun to the rear window of the Maserati.

  The tinted glass framed Santa Maria Dei Montesanto and Santa Maria Dei Miracoli, the churches that divide the streets which fan out from the south side of the piazza. Befittingly, the baroque twins were clothed in a matching latticework of construction scaffolding.

  Another gunshot echoed through the stone piazza.

  As the sharp pop rang in his ears, Andrew wondered why neither pedestrians, nor workers crawling about the scaffolding, had reacted or taken cover.

  Silvio Festa knew why. Silvio was the smoothly muscled construction worker using the Ram-set, a gunlike tool that anchors things to concrete. He fired it dozens of times each day, and the sharp report had become just another sound in the noisy piazza.