By now it was dusk, and as the convoy re-formed in squares, the Dutch minesweeper leading, Woodall ordered all ships to turn south again in a wide arc, avoiding the area where the trawlers had sown their deadly harvest. But only he, among the entire complement of the cruiser and all the other ships, knew that R-1 had been an experiment — with the empty container ships as decoys. As another admiral before him, Mountbatten, had sent the Canadian Corps to invade a beach in Normandy to test the theory for D-Day, to see if it could be done, Woodall was now seeing if “rollover” was feasible. And as Mountbatten had hoped to draw out the Luftwaffe during the Dieppe raid, now R-1 was to draw out the Russians for the killing. The Dieppe raid had been a terrible failure — more than two-thirds killed, the rest taken prisoner — but from it came the invaluable lessons of D-Day.
The men like Horton in charge of “rollover” had to know as quickly as possible whether the square base, fan- shaped screen convoy was workable in real combat. But the awful thing for Woodall was that now that it had been tried in actual battle conditions, the first time in modern missile warfare, he knew he could not give SACLANT or anyone else a definitive answer, other than to say that the Soviets had very effectively attacked the convoy by deception, using mines to devastating effect. Without question, it was a terrible loss for the convoy, eight of the container ships sunk, two escorts, a total of over four hundred men dead. But the Russian subs, the more telling test for the long-run strategy, had not appeared at all. So far.
Again Woodall wondered what was happening at the GIUK Gap, where NATO had laid its noise-signature- primed mines.
ACCHAN in Northwood, U.K., had replied that as yet no explosions had been picked up by the GUIK SOSUS network or by any towed sonar arrays.
The only good piece of news Woodall received was that Greenland’s ice sheet was farther out than usual for September, making the Greenland-Iceland Gap even narrower, so that if the Soviet subs were going to break out, it would most likely be through the Iceland-Faeroe gap as they rounded Norway’s north cape.
“That would narrow the field,” the cruiser’s captain commented to Woodall.
“Possibly,” answered the admiral, “unless they used the ice sheet as cover.”
“Then they’d have to bust through, sir. Make a hell of a din. Could hear it in Piccadilly.”
“No,” said Woodall, “they could use the sheet as cover until they’re well south of the main channel, then break out on their left flank at speed — into open water.”
“There’s still our mines,” said the cruiser’s captain.
“Then why haven’t our listening posts in Iceland heard them popping off?” pressed Woodall.
“Yes, unless—” The captain could see that the admiral had already thought of it, too — the possibility of it — the trawlers being the tip-off. “Bloody hell, sir. Special forces?”
“Yes,” replied Woodall. “Bastards might have wiped out the listening posts. Either that or been digging up the damned SOSUS lines.”
“Dragging them up would be tricky,” commented the captain. “Take an age, too.”
“I agree,” said Woodall, worriedly, his eyes roaming the leaden horizon as night began its descent. “I’d say we’re not hearing anything because the—”
“Lines have been closed,” put in the captain, as eager as Woodall for an explanation.
Woodall was pacing back and forth across the cruiser’s bridge, oblivious to the winking lights of the steering console and the phosphorescent sweep of the radar’s arm. “I’d say the posts are still operational but are being run by the SPETS. They’ve deactivated the mines from shore-control relay. We’re being
“How about the call-in code checks they’d have to answer?”
“Broken the code, old boy. Or more likely they’ve been sold the bloody things. Some pretty East German secretary in Bonn, no doubt — slipping her boss a bit more than rollover.”
“I don’t like that much,” said the captain.
“Neither do I. Those subs could be breaking out right now.”
They were both quite wrong. No listening stations had been overrun — NATO had given top priority to defending them — nor was the sub fleet that had come out of the Kara Sea and around the Kola Peninsula in the process of breaking out. They had already done so. Hours before.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
In the morning Tae had told the NKA interrogation officer, Major Rhee, albeit politely, that he would not cooperate. The NKA pulled two teeth with pliers. Tae blacked out for a second or two, but once conscious again, shook his head, refusing to tell them anything beyond his rank, name and ROK identification number. Rhee told him
The moment he entered, seeing Major Rhee sitting behind a folding camp table, writing pad and pencil before him as he sat staring at Tae, Tae noticed another smell, something instantly familiar — the fragrance of plumeria.
It was Mi-Ja, standing quietly in the far corner of the tent to his left. The light was poor but not so dark that he could not see the tears streaming down her face.
“
“Be quiet!” ordered Rhee without looking at her, then addressing Tae, a beefy NKA guard behind. “You will tell us,” instructed Rhee, “all the names of all underground counterespionage leaders in Taegu, Yosu, and Pusan. Otherwise we will give your daughter to our soldiers — to do with as they please.”
Tae shook his head, unable to speak, his head now bowed in shame. The NKA major walked over to Mi-Ja and took her long, dark hair, wrapping it around his wrist, jerking her head back sharply and tearing her bodice open with his other hand, her breasts naked in the dim yellow light as they rose and fell sharply in her panic.
Tae knew that if he gave them the names they wanted, not only would the chief underground counterinsurgency agents be rounded up and shot, but also their families and everyone who knew them. Hundreds. Rhee’s left hand flashed up and grabbed Mi-Ja’s breast, his finger and thumb squeezing at the nipple. She cried out and Tae turned to help her only to be knocked down with the guard’s rifle butt onto the earthen floor, the taste of mud now mixing with the metallic taste of blood.
“The names!” yelled Rhee. “Now!”
Tae had intended giving them false names to buy time, the name “Kim,” for example, as common as “Smith” in English. The NKA major, the guard’s eyes popping out with surprised delight, moved his left hand down and began rubbing it hard between Mi-Ja’s legs.
“Leave her,” screamed Tae, frightening the guard, who stepped back from him before he retaliated, smashing Tae in the face with his rifle butt. Mi-Ja heard the bone crack and saw her father fall, unable to get up with his hands still bound behind his back, his foot slipping on the muddy floor even as he tried. Rhee let Mi-Ja go and she ran to Tae crying, pleading hysterically to tell them.
Tae, on his knees, was shaking his head in a way she had never seen before, like a stricken dog trying to rid himself of some internal noise which he couldn’t locate and for which all prior experience had not prepared him, stunned, and as full consciousness returned, wondering how they had found Mi-Ja. Perhaps through her boyfriend in the Reunification Party, which explained to Tae why they’d taken several days before deciding to interrogate him.
“Up!” ordered Rhee, and Tae, using one of the table’s legs for support, struggled unsteadily to his feet.
“Untie him,” ordered Rhee, and the guard used his bayonet to cut the knot. The major held out the pencil to Tae. “Print!” he ordered. “And you! “he shouted at Mi-Ja, who was now cowering back in the far comer of the tent like a whipped dog, trying to cover her shame. “Be quiet or you will be sorry!”
