Kilo Class

are in order.”

“Yeah. As well as they can be with no real start date,” replied Admiral Mulligan. “I suppose there’s no earthly point trying to put the arm on Beijing, is there?”

“Well, we might just be able to blackmail them on trade issues, but that’s not the problem. What’s holding us back is the fact that we don’t want to let ’em know how much we care.”

By this time Admiral Morgan was pacing the office. “I just hope,” he was growling, “that we do not have to take out all seven of them. The Chinese are a lot of things, but they’re not stupid. I think they’ll get the message early in the proceedings. They’ll buy the Admiral Gudenko, which is not terrifically good news. But if we nail K-4 and K-5, they’ll almost certainly bag the order for the last five Kilos.”

“I wouldn’t be absolutely certain of that, Arnold.”

“I’m not absolutely certain, for Christ’s sake. That’s just my best guess. Meanwhile I better tell Harcourt to get the Russian ambassador in there right away and warn him what the subject is gonna be, so’s he brings the right aide.”

The Admiral picked up a telephone, got through to the office of the US Secretary of State immediately. A few minutes later Admiral Mulligan heard him sign off by saying, “Okay, I’m on my way.”

Forty minutes later Admiral Morgan was talking to the Secretary of State, who was voicing a very real fear that the Russians might in turn put the Chinese in the picture. “Tell ’em precisely how anxious we are. Which we do not want.”

“No chance of that, Harcourt. It would not be in their best interest to do so. What would happen if the Chinese said, ‘Oh, okay then, we won’t go ahead’? I’ll tell you the answer to that right now. The aircraft carrier order would go straight down the gurgler, which would probably cause a military trade war with the Ukraine. And Moscow would lose the biggest submarine order it has ever had — worth in total around three billion dollars, not including the Admiral Gudenko.”

“Hmmm. Then I suppose we better give old Nikolai some kind of a time limit, two days maybe, to make sure the submarines do not go to China. Don’t hold out a lot of hope though, how ’bout you?”

“None. But that’s the way we have to proceed. And when he refuses?”

“You know the President’s views, Arnold. He would just like the plan carried out in the most discreet way possible.”

“Right. Where we gonna meet the ambassador?”

“I think in this instance your office. There’s a kind of natural, hostile, quasi-military atmosphere in there. And we might just have a better chance of frightening him.”

“Okay, see you there at 1700, right? He ought to make it by then.”

“Correct. And by the way, you wouldn’t be civilized enough to produce a cup of decent coffee, would you?”

“Very possibly, but don’t count on it,” the Admiral called back. He was already thundering down the corridor, back to his lair, in which he intended to unnerve the senior Washington representative of the Russian government. He was good at that type of bare-knuckle diplomacy.

Harcourt Travis showed up on time and confirmed that Nikolai Ryabinin, the Russian ambassador, was on his way over to the White House, as all ambassadors surely must be, when summoned by the most senior representatives of the President of the United States.

Mr. Ryabinin was a short and stocky, white-haired career diplomat of some sixty-six summers, or in his case, winters. He was a native of Leningrad and had survived an early setback to his career when he was expelled from the Soviet Embassy in London as a spy after working as a junior cultural attache for only three months. That happened during Sir Alec Douglas Home’s sudden purge in the mid-1960s along with about ninety of Nikolai’s more senior colleagues, who were also suspected of skullduggery.

But Nikolai had survived. He had represented the Kremlin in various posts in the Middle East including Cairo, and served as the Russian ambassador in Paris, Tokyo, and then Washington. He was wily, evasive, and extremely sharp. Deceptively so.

He now entered the West Wing in the company of his Naval attache, Rear Admiral Victor Scuratov, a tall heavily built Naval officer who had until very recently been in charge of combat training programs in the Baltic.

The two men looked extremely uncomfortable as they were shown into Admiral Morgan’s office. Nikolai himself had been so concerned about meeting the former lion of Fort Meade that he had taken the trouble to call Admiral Vitaly Rankov, now ensconced in the Kremlin as the Chief of the Main Navy Staff, for a quick brief on what he might expect from the Americans.

“Arnold Morgan will not hesitate to have you removed from the United States if he feels you are not playing straight,” the Russian admiral had cautioned. “He’s a ruthless bastard and I’m glad I’m not in your shoes. Just remember one thing: if he makes a threat he will carry it out. So don’t even think of calling his bluff. Be honest with him, as honest as you can. His bark’s bad, but his bite’s worse.”

Mr. Ryabinin was not encouraged. And now he stood in the lion’s den, shaking hands with the lion himself and being told to “sit down, and I’ll give you a cup of coffee.”

The four men sat around a large polished table at the end of the room. Harcourt Travis came to the plate and said he presumed the ambassador and his attache knew why they were here. They confirmed that they did but were very afraid that progress might prove extremely difficult. The Ukraine problem was not easily solvable, they explained, and if the Chinese did not get their submarines, there would be no completion of the aircraft carrier. This could cost the current Russian leader his Presidency, given the resulting unrest in the Ukraine, not to mention the despondency in the great Russian shipyard cities. And in Mr. Ryabinin’s view, the Russian President would rather have an angry America than no job.

“Do you have any idea how angry, Mr. Ambassador?”

“Yes, I do. And to make matters rather worse, I also understand why. My own view is that we should think very carefully about this. But in the end, the President of Russia will have to decide between a peaceful solution with yourselves, which would involve not selling the ships, and losing the next election. It would also involve seriously upsetting our biggest customer.”

“But if you do not do as we request, relations between East and West may revert to the dark ages of the Cold War, which in the end would be far more damaging for Russia than losing an order for a half-dozen submarines.”

“I understand completely, Mr. Travis. But it must be my unhappy task to hand this over to my President, and shall we agree that most men who have attained very high office have a self-interested streak?”

“Well, Mr. Ambassador, I think you must understand we feel very strongly about this, and if you do proceed with the Chinese order there will be a few hard financial truths for you to face in your future dealings with us. You realize we are able to make things difficult for any Russian President, including this one. On the other hand, we can be, and are, extremely good friends to you.”

“So, I am afraid, are the Chinese.”

Admiral Morgan, who had been silent until now, decided it was probably time to fire a shot or two across the Russian bows. “How would it be, Ambassador, if we went out and blew the two Kilos out of the water, and then told the Chinese you knew all along what was going to happen but deliberately failed to warn them in the interest of keeping your hot little hands on that huge bundle of Chinese yuan and your President’s job?”

Nikolai Ryabinin was shocked at the frontal assault. So was Harcourt Travis, who dropped his expensive gold pen on the table with a clatter.

In flawless English, the veteran Russian diplomat, mindful of the warning of Admiral Rankov, said quietly, “That would be widely construed by the international community as an unwarranted act of war. Unworthy of the United States of America. A large number of dead sailors, whatever their nationality, does not play well in front of a large world television audience.”

“How about if we did it in secret and then somehow alerted the Chinese Navy that your submarine had sunk the Kilos, as a way of holding on to the export order and keeping us happy at the same time,” Admiral Morgan said impassively.

Harcourt Travis went white. The ambassador made no reply. And the Navy attache just shook his head.

“Admiral Morgan, I do not think even you would try to pull off something like that,” the Ambassador said finally.

“Don’t you?” growled the Admiral.