“From their selfish perspective, the fault has to be yours.”
“Yes.”
“Now I see your difficulty…. But I think it’s even worse than you realize.”
Balakirev paused. Meredov sensed him hesitating. “Explain,” Balakirev said curtly, but defensively.
“One of two things happened. The fence gave a false alarm, and by responding to it your field personnel revealed procedures and electronic warfare intelligence to the Americans. Or…”
“Or what?” Balakirev was definitely uncomfortable now. He knew Meredov was much smarter than him. Balakirev had risen as far as rear admiral by attending the Naval Academy — a special pedigree, a door-opener — and from then on he brown-nosed shamelessly. His background was in guided missile cruisers, though the one he’d been captain of seldom left its pier. He knew little about submarines and antisubmarine warfare.
“Or, there really was a submarine there that was somehow able to outwit your forces.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that. It’s the real reason I phoned.”
Now came the time for the understated negotiating games, the manipulation and countermanipulation that often occurred when two Russian officers spoke.
“What do you expect me to do to assist you?”
“I’d rather be censured for what our boss wants to think already happened, than be shot later on if the incident was just the opening act of something larger.”
“You have my sympathies.” Meredov didn’t like being sarcastic, but it was normal to toy with someone else when the situation implied any chance for advantage.
“You’re clearly objective. You have the technical skills for it, and I wouldn’t know where to begin. If I send you all the data from the engagement, from the fence spires, the sonobuoys, the Il-Thirty-Eight, the surface-ship sonars, can your staff take an independent look? Do a peer review, so to speak.”
“I see what you’re trying to do. Drag me in as a second voice of rank equal to yours on which no blame has fallen so far. Together we jump on the question of whether the fence’s false alarm wasn’t false. If an unknown submarine did somehow evade your Bering Strait forces, and my surveillance hydrophone-net center’s supercomputer can prove it, you get the fence people off your case, bravely raise the alarm to our boss to preempt severer punishment later, and maybe keep your career on track by publicly demoting a couple of ship commanders under you for lack of sufficient diligence…. And if I can prove that there was indeed nothing there even though the spire sensors said there was, you shove back against the pro-fence contingent’s self-serving allegations, make them the scapegoats while your unit’s rash actions right under American eyes appear instead to be reasonably justified…. Did that capture all of it?”
“Yes.”
“Just one question. Why should I help you?”
“I know we have our differences, but look at the larger picture. Normal American submarine transits going by the Arctic Sea route to the Atlantic would surely use their side of the strait. Right? And we know the Axis have no submarines at all in the Pacific.”
By now Meredov was thinking out loud as much as he was talking to Balakirev. “If the fence detected a sub that was really there, then it’s certainly up to no good.”
“And presumably it would be, or could be, heading right for your area of responsibility. With something sinister planned.”
Meredov frowned. Balakirev was doing a good job of forcing his involvement. “I need to do two things, then. Have my people start crunching your numbers under my supervision and guidance, but also bring my forces to a heightened state of alert.”
“Yes.”
“Hold on a minute.” Meredov muted the phone. He looked at Irina, standing in the doorway. “You’re following this?”
“Mostly, Admiral.”
“I’m afraid it’s going to be a late night for both of us. Tell the computer center to expect a very large data file from Anadyr soon, via the secure fiber optic line. I’ll issue instructions on what to do with it once I get a better feel for what sort of data we have.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Get in touch with my chief of staff.” Malenkova’s direct superior. “My deputy too.” Meredov’s second in command. Both men — captains, first rank — were traveling at far-flung bases. “Have them establish a higher alert for an undersea intrusion.”
“Yes, sir.”
He unmuted the phone again. “If there’s nothing new or useful embedded in the data,” he told Balakirev, “you’re really going to owe me for this.”
“If the fence needs recalibration, you get the credit for proving it, and for bolstering our defenses in a vital naval choke point. But if an unidentified sub turns out to have snuck through our side of the strait, and you can show that, again you look good but also protect the Motherland from what might well be a dangerous threat.”
“A very dangerous threat, if this hypothetical sub can really do what you seem to want me to think it can do.”
“I know.”
An hour later, Malenkova knocked and entered Meredov’s office, holding a file of papers and computer printouts. “Initial summaries from the data center, Admiral.” She handed him the materials.
“Sit, Irina, while I take a quick look through these.”
“Yes, Admiral.” She settled into one of the overstuffed guest chairs. He could tell that she was troubled.
“What’s the matter?”
“This Germany strategy change that Rear Admiral Balakirev told you about…. It makes the future seem very volatile, sir. The chance of a nuclear holocaust now…”
Meredov put down the papers. “Irina, listen. For fifteen centuries, since Eastern Slavs first settled along the Dnipro River, when has the Motherland’s future not been murky, and her present not fraught with strife? Viking overlords, Tatar hordes, the Poles, the Swedes, the Turks, Napoleon’s Grand Army. The Crimean War, the Turks again, the Japanese, the kaiser. The foreign Interventionists meddling in Lenin’s Revolution. Oppression by the tsars. Oppression by the communists. The Cold War. Afghanistan, Chernobyl, Chechnya…. My parents, as children, survived the siege of Leningrad, you know. For nine hundred days Hitler’s Wehrmacht attacked and our forebears fought them off without flinching. A million people died of starvation. I saw the mass graves in the cemetery north of the city as I grew up. The Great Patriotic War taught my parents to face the present and future with courage, not fear. And they taught me. Individuals count but little. Mother Russia is eternal. Mother Russia has already lasted far longer than ancient Rome.”
Irina glanced thoughtfully at her hands, folded neatly in her lap; Leningrad, or Petrograd under the tsars, was called St. Petersburg now, and still had fewer cats and dogs than other Russian cities — pets became human food in the siege.
“Courage,” Meredov told her. “Not fear.”
Chapter 9
Jeffrey sat in
