Seas of Crisis

among submarine and antisubmarine units, including mine. But the Strategic Rocket Forces didn’t pay it any attention. In retrospect they should have.”

“Seems so.” It’s taking an awfully long while for the Hot Line to get working.

“But there was more. Some of my people who track drifting ice that might threaten the Northern Sea Route summer shipping lanes noticed a large piece of floe that was behaving strangely.” Meredov drew more arrows, marked “Wind” and “Current.” Then he drew a big “U” on the map, from the edge of the ice cap to the coast and back to the cap. He put in more dates and times.

“The floe had an ice hummock on one side. I thought perhaps this accounted for the odd course it followed, with prevailing winds and surface currents coming from opposite directions. But prior events had strongly aroused my suspicions. Having slept on the problem, I sent helicopters to locate the floe and make an examination. From very close. By landing on it.”

“What did you find?”

“The hummock was gone.”

“Melted.”

“No. It was never a hummock to begin with.”

“Admiral?”

“Holes and wear marks and fibers left on the floe made it clear that a submarine had moored itself to the floe, gone south with it, then returned to the edge of the cap, cut loose, and disappeared under the pack ice.”

“That’s how the attackers came ashore?”

“I raised a second alarm at once. This time the army paid attention. They found tracks left by a group of commandos, roughly following the Alazeja River, coming inland, heading south. At first I was worried that they might be after my headquarters. But then we realized that the commandos had gone the other way, toward Srednekolymsk.”

“What happened next?”

“All this took several days, you understand. But finally the Strategic Rocket Forces put the base complex there on highest alert against intruders. Even so, hours later the commandos made their attack. Which, as you know, was successful.”

“So you’re saying that your antisubmarine operations provided adequate warning, coupled with tracking by the Army, and still the base was penetrated?”

“Yes.”

“It sounds more and more like the commandos had inside help. Either from the government, or from rogues hiding within the government. Sorry, Admiral, this doesn’t support Russia’s case. The Kremlin is so in bed with Berlin, and has been so unreceptive to American diplomatic urgings for true neutrality for so long, that the President of the United States will have his own list of culprits, and ‘Russia’ will be at the top of the list. For all he and I know, Germany is complicit as well. They could have dreamed up the idea first and shared it with the Kremlin. Or with rogues Berlin recruited in promise of taking charge of Russia, as their puppets, after a coup. Either way, Moscow is in deep trouble, the offender to American eyes.”

“But now we come to Challenger.”

“What about Challenger?” At this point, Jeffrey wasn’t volunteering anything.

Meredov drew another mark, in the middle of the Laptev Sea, and put a date next to it, today’s. “Here is where you contacted me, at your president’s orders.”

“Sure.”

Meredov began to draw dotted lines between some of the different places he’d marked. One nuclear sub could have been at all those different places easily… and the trail ended with an indisputable fact: Challenger breaking stealth to call Meredov.

He looked at Jeffrey hard. “Why did you sneak through the Russian side of the Bering Strait two weeks ago? What have you been doing in our waters ever since?”

“I did no such thing in the Bering Strait. I came across the top of Canada from the United States East Coast.”

“Nonsense. We know you were in Australia too recently.”

“I was not in Australia recently.”

Meredov reached into his jacket pocket. Jeffrey saw he’d hit some kind of showdown with the man. It was as if Meredov, knowing he held a winning hand, was putting his cards on the table, with utter finality.

Meredov unfolded a piece of paper. He showed it to Jeffrey. “This is you, Captain, on the Russian side of the Bering Strait, heading north, outfoxing Balakirev’s antisubmarine units in a way which is entirely in character for your known command style. I repeat the question. What were you doing there? And more importantly, what were you doing since then?”

“You know I can’t comment on undersea warfare activities.”

“Then you don’t deny that this computer-generated image is indeed your ship, at the time and place so indicated?”

“I neither confirm nor deny anything. This aggressive cross-examination is inappropriate, and counterproductive. Anyone with graphics software could manufacture that imagery.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence!”

Bad move. He knows that printout is real.

“You have two choices, Captain Fuller. You can give me a good explanation of your ship’s recent movements and intent, or you can decline to do so. In the latter case, I will have to tell my superiors that your ship is strongly implicated in perpetrating the missile disaster at Srednekolymsk.”

The silence over the speakerphone was deafening. Meredov was turning up the heat on Jeffrey before a live but invisible audience — one that could swing things way out of U.S. control.

“All right. Don’t make a confusing situation even worse. Challenger was tasked to blockade and sink the Eight-six-eight-U that we know you’ll soon transfer to German ownership.”

“By proceeding from the Bering Strait toward the far end of Russia on such pressing business at less than seven knots?”

He’s too damned good. He’s got me by the short hairs.

Jeffrey had to think fast, in the type of confrontation he most dearly wished to avoid: a battle of wits, face to face with his adversary, with every word being overheard and recorded.

“It’s public that our subs do dwell near Russia for covert surveillance. Big deal. Ancient history. Why is that news?” Meredov didn’t know of Jeffrey’s long side trip east, to meet Carter near Canada. He damned well better not ever know.

“It’s news because of the SS-27s that launched! I understand submarine operations, remember?” Meredov thumped the qualification badge on his own chest for emphasis. “Again, I warn you, do not insult my intelligence!”

I need to take the initiative and play a vigorous countergambit, or everything is doomed…. But how?

In a flash of insight, the pieces came together.

Jeffrey sighed, as if in resignation. “When you mention intelligence, Admiral, you strike at the core of the matter, closer than you realize.”

“Explain.”

“Your real problem is the coincidence of timing, between my presence in the Laptev Sea and the SS-Twenty- seven launches, correct?”

“Correct.”

“I understand now why it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“So you admit America’s guilt?”

“No! Absolutely not! What I admit is that American undersea warfare operations have been compromised by the Axis.”

“Go on.”

“There were circumstantial indications for a while, that they knew in advance of some of our most important submarine missions.”

“So?”