Straits of Power

documents. Needless to say, the broken navy code was discontinued immediately.”

Jeffrey sat there stunned. “Wait a minute.” He glanced at Wilson.

“Take your time,” Wilson said.

“ ‘Someone’—you’re sure they’re German?”

“We think so,” Parker replied. “We need you to help us verify that.”

“How?”

“Step by step,” Parker said dryly.

Jeffrey pondered this. “A German sent a message encrypted in two American codes, one inside the other. He sent us German documents using our own supposedly unbreakable codes…. These documents would be classified, to the Axis? Not just last month’s newspaper from Leipzig or something?”

“Absolutely these would be classified documents.”

“He’s acting like a friend. He’s done us two huge favors, right? He sent us secret German materials, and he warned us that they compromised one of our most important crypto protocols.”

Parker nodded.

“But why two codes? And the New York City subway? … Wait, I think I see why. He had to keep the Germans from knowing what he was doing, right? Otherwise, they’d pick up exactly what we picked up from Turkey, and know they had a traitor, and they’d track him down and string him up. So, the outer code is one he broke on his own, moonlighting, so to speak, knowing that no other German could read it, but we could, once we recognized it.”

“Got it in one again,” Hodgkiss said. “But our concern is that the guy is not for real, not what he seems, a red herring or a double agent. He appears to have some access to extremely close-held German naval information. Access that might be authorized to him, or unauthorized, we don’t know. Since there seems no limit to what this guy can do, it’s possible he isn’t Imperial German Navy at all. It’s possible he cracked his own country’s security, and sent these particular documents to really, really hold our interest.”

“As a point of caution,” Parker warned, “we also need to step back and ask ourselves, hard, if any single human being could do all the different things this unknown person seems to be able to do…. That’s one strong cause for suspicion right there. This looks too much like something concocted by a team, not an individual. Another long-term trait of German martial practices is that the deception schemes they hatch get overinvolved, overembellished.”

“Concur,” Hodgkiss said coldly. “And if indeed done by a team, this gets a lot lower probability rating of being sincere, and a vastly higher likelihood of being some sort of trap. A trap that by the sheer vastness and complexity of the scheme must promise tremendous fruits for the Axis, at a terrible cost to us.” Hodgkiss turned to Jeffrey. “Captain, you’re the only man alive who can take us to the next stage in understanding this.”

Parker handed Jeffrey a stack of forms. “You’re cleared for TOUCHSTONE Alfa. Sign these.” Jeffrey signed.

Parker slid a thick manila envelope across the table. It was sealed, and marked TOP SECRET and NOFORN, in big red letters; NOFORN meant no non — U.S. citizens could know anything about it. It was stamped USE EYES ONLY, which meant it mustn’t be read out loud or talked about in specific detail — this to defeat any enemy bugging devices even in areas that were supposed to be swept.

The envelope was also marked, oddly enough, “Task Group 47.2,” which, if this was navy parlance, had to be a small unit of ships that Jeffrey had never heard of.

“These are the documents?” Jeffrey said. “In English?”

“See that door?” Hodgkiss pointed.

“Yes, Admiral.” It wasn’t the door they’d come through.

“Take the envelope and open it in there,” Parker said. “Here’s a pencil. Make notes if you want, but only in the margins of the documents themselves. When you’re done, leave everything and come back out. Spend as long as you need, but remember, every minute counts.”

“What exactly are you looking for from me?”

Parker deferred to Hodgkiss, who made one of his trademark intimidating eye locks with Jeffrey.

“Captain, tell us if these documents are real.”

Chapter 3

The door into the small workroom was surprisingly thick and heavy, and the furnishings were sparse and drab: a card table and a plastic office chair. Jeffrey was startled to see a burly African-American standing against one wall. The man wore a sports jacket, with a bulge at his left armpit that Jeffrey knew must be a shoulder holster.

“Have a seat, sir,” he said politely. His voice was strong and resonating, but his eyes were hooded.

“You’ve been here the whole time?”

“Yes, sir.” He double-checked that the door was firmly shut, then turned hasps at the top and bottom. Bolts slid closed with a thunk. “This room is now ultrasecure.”

Jeffrey opened the envelope. He spread the contents before him on the table. There was a cover memo from Commodore Wilson, verifying in writing his basic instructions on what to do. There were also the two documents, each in a white ring binder whose cover and spine said TOP SECRET NOFORN in bright red. The beginning of each translated document included a date: mid-January 2012, and late April 2012. Jeffrey started to read, the earlier first. Footnotes by the NSA’s German-language linguist specialists explained nuances of phrasing that didn’t carry over well from German to English.

Jeffrey tapped his pencil’s eraser end on the table. He read further. His heart began to pound. Despite the steady air-conditioning, the room felt much too warm. Jeffrey read more, at first in disbelief, then in utter fascination. He forgot the attendant watching him, he forgot his own fatigue. He began to have flashbacks. Sometimes, when he came across especially revealing passages, he nodded to himself while he read.

The documents were written in a direct and pithy style, as a linguist’s notation had said they would be. The wording was formal, official, but the more of it Jeffrey consumed, the more the person who wrote it came alive. He could feel the writer’s passion for his subject, and his pride, and caught hints of brilliant insights, and lasting regrets.

Feelings and sensations flooded Jeffrey now. The scream of torpedo-engine sounds, the deafening noise and pummeling of tactical nuclear warheads sending shock waves through the sea. The shouted reports of Jeffrey’s crew in his control room, the orders he snapped out hoarsely in response. The hours of silence, waiting on nail- biting tenterhooks. The seconds of sheer panic and physical pain. The biting stench of smoke, and the rubbery taste of his emergency air-breathing mask.

With the second report, Jeffrey relived another recent battle. It was as if he watched over someone else’s shoulder, seeing things as that person did, and getting inside his mind.

It was a formidable mind. It belonged to someone Jeffrey couldn’t help but admire, and whom he feared encountering ever again. Yet such an encounter appeared inevitable, and the information laid before Jeffrey, sent by whoever had sent it, could make the difference the next time between survival and death.

The documents were postaction patrol reports, filed by an Imperial German Navy nuclear submariner. The documents had to be real. They had to be legitimate. Far too much conformed exactly to Jeffrey’s own memory of the seemingly endless running battles. Too many open questions in Jeffrey’s mind were being answered — with what seemed to be utter credibility. The writer knew things that only someone who’d been there every moment, in command, could possibly know. And Jeffrey was, indeed, the only person alive on the Allied side who could testify for sure that these documents weren’t fake.

Jeffrey lost all track of time, devouring more and more. At last he finished reading. He looked again at the first pages, with the name of the German captain who’d prepared them. Jeffrey needed to stare at the name in print, to try to assure himself that he wasn’t dreaming. He knew the man’s face already, from an old file photo. He knew the warrior in the man, from mortal combat. Twice he and Jeffrey had clashed at close quarters, in a viciously personal way, in some of the most significant naval engagements of the war. And twice both men had survived