Straits of Power

refuse the gift. Then, when he made a counteroffer of a sales-related get-together, I couldn’t turn him down without appearing rude — and risk spoiling the deal.

He knows where I like to go at night. He’s obviously been briefed, up to a point. He knows they need to get me out of the consulate, and he’s provided a perfect cover plan.

Mohr was pretty certain that Iqbal wasn’t a German agent sent to check his loyalty. Axis counterintelligence wouldn’t be this indirect, this ambiguous, and leave so much room for Mohr to protest his innocence. But still, Mohr needed to proceed with great caution.

“I’ll have to ask my superiors. There are concerns these days, you understand. Kidnappings, shootings on the street… As I say, my country is at war.”

“Herr Mohr, I assure you, my firm does pay attention to what some would call executive protection…. If I come collect you at the consulate front door in an armored town car, would that not be satisfactory?… The party will likely go on all night. Don’t you live in a safe house or apartment, where you can change clothes and pick up anything else you might need?”

Mohr cringed when he heard the phrase “safe house”—it could be taken more than one way, and he was sure Iqbal intended it so. Mohr thought ahead, and an icy feeling ran through his body. Special hardware and software would need to be grabbed from the hands of the Kampfschwimmer who were training to use the quantum computer field gear under combat conditions soon; they and Mohr were stationed here for final calibration under climate and terrain conditions as similar as possible to the coastline and mountains of Israel.

Mohr knew he had to answer very carefully. Iqbal had just asked him a hidden question — about logistics and resources needed for the extraction by the Americans. “Something like that sounds good. I do share a house with a few other Germans…. Will your friends have a pool? Should I bring swim trunks? I’m glad I remembered to mention that. Many people I know here rather enjoy exercising that way.” Mohr was trying to convey that German battle swimmers were part of the picture for this all-night party: exercise, as in a military exercise. In a way these back- and-forth veiled hints and signals seemed silly, but Mohr didn’t think they had any choice. Iqbal has started it, so he assumed this was the way spies sometimes worked.

“A pool? Yes. Swim trunks? Of course.” Iqbal appeared to get the message.

“Where will the party be?”

Iqbal gave the name of a wealthy neighborhood near the Bosporus. Mohr at first was surprised. He’d expected someplace seedy or secluded.

Then he saw that the arrangements would be most plausible this way. He was sure that Iqbal’s employer was legitimate, so everything would check out. Missile parts from Pakistan. Mohr didn’t think his superiors would say no to this too quickly…. They would definitely put a security tail on the town car.

And that quantum computer equipment is vital. The U.S. has no idea how absolutely vital. What I think of as the attack software and operating system for it would be opaque gibberish to any American machine, even a quantum computer of their own…. This could all get very messy, but I can’t turn back now.

“When do you suggest we have our little outing?”

“Alas, I’ll be traveling for several days.”

Mohr’s heart pounded. Iqbal made a show of removing his calendar book from his briefcase. The briefcase and the calendar book were also bound in a nice maroon leather.

“As you see, I appreciate the finer things, as I’m sure you do, Herr Mohr. Date books one writes in by hand for some people, computer gadgets for others. Perhaps we are opposites, no?”

Chapter 17

Grand Admiral Doenitz had obeyed the procedures announced by the Allies for neutral submarines to transit the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap submerged. Egon Schneider’s hardest job had been to act like a Russian captain would: cooperative, but impatient.

Schneider smirked. Things had been very suspenseful. There was always the risk that enemy spies had pierced Doenitz’s cover story. But Allied inspection platforms bought his ruse. Active and passive sonars, dipping laser line-scan cameras, human divers — Schneider watched and listened to them all through his ship’s sensors while they watched and listened to him, the first-ever 868U to venture into the Atlantic.

As he’d expected, Doenitz was picked up by an Allied nuclear submarine that, two days later, still followed in trail, using the hull flow noise and propulsor wake turbulence that Schneider intentionally gave him by making a steady twelve knots. He was half-surprised that it wasn’t what he considered one of the Allies’ first-line fast-attacks. The Dreadnought, Seawolf, and Connecticut must have been given other, more pressing duties.

After all, their war opponent is Germany, not Russia.

The trailing sub was one of the refurbished Los Angeles class. Though the earliest ones had been broken up for scrap years before, the later models were upgraded repeatedly. Within their speed and depth envelope they were good, very quiet and even retrofitted with sonar wide-aperture arrays. The captain of this particular Los Angeles boat was surely eager to learn about the 868U’s own maximum speed and depth capabilities.

And this, of course, as a pretend Russian captain, Schneider was not supposed to allow. What I am supposed to do, and what fits with my mission orders from Berlin, is lose him, evade the trail — without betraying my true identity.

At the command console, Schneider thought over how he would do this. All around him his crew were intent on their screens and instruments. The air-circulation ducts gave off a constant rushing sound — though the fresh air couldn’t dispel the compartment’s aroma of ozone and stale sweat, and brought with it the pungent smell of amine from the carbon-dioxide scrubbers aft. The control-room lighting was bright because it was daytime on the surface.

Schneider felt just enough pressure to make his analysis interesting. He knew he might have committed some error back in the gap, or that the Allies might have picked up something about his ship at point-blank range, and at any moment they could deduce that Doenitz was really German, and the Los Angeles would be ordered to open fire. But that hadn’t happened yet, and every hour that passed made it seem more unlikely. Meanwhile, he enjoyed toying with the American captain, lulling him before Schneider gave him the shock of his life.

“The most important thing is not to rush.”

“Sir?” Knipp asked from the seat to his right.

Schneider sent a duplicate of the large-scale nautical chart he was using to Knipp’s console screen. Doenitz was off of Ireland, running at 300 meters in water four kilometers deep. “We’ll continue our base course southwest, until we get here.” With his joystick he moved a cursor on Knipp’s chart, marking a spot on the endless Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the water for a stretch was barely seven hundred meters deep — a high plateau in the underwater mountains along the volcanic spreading seam that had formed the ridge.

“We need to lose the American without him understanding why he lost us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can’t exactly accelerate to sixty knots in plain view, and suddenly vanish on his passive arrays while he listens.”

“No, sir.”

Schneider used his screen cursor to measure distances, then did a calculation. For something this simple he didn’t need help from the navigator. “Pilot, make your speed twenty knots.”

“Make my speed twenty knots, jawohl,” the junior officer at the helm acknowledged.

“Sir?”

“It’s natural for us to move faster now that we’re reaching the open Atlantic…. I’ve picked a speed so we’ll reach that nice place on the ridge in twenty-four hours. Since it will thus be broad daylight again, the deep