Kilo Class

bring him down here to Moscow.”

“Of course, sir,” added Lieutenant Commander Kazakov, “they might have fixed the explosive right back in Nizhny where the barges were stationary for several days…maybe using some kind of a special seven-day detonator.”

“They may have, Andrei,” replied the Admiral. “But I think not. That’s too loose. Too much out of their control. Not knowing where the charges would blow…whoever did this was under tight control, and an accurate, long-delay, position-specific, underwater detonator, if such a thing exists, does not really fit the pattern, do you think?”

“No, sir. Not really. And anyway it brings us right back to the original problem. If this was done by a hostile foreign power, how did they get the explosive into Russia without anyone knowing?”

“Well, I heard the Americans may have one little invention that no one else has. I think it’s made in California, but it operates on a similar principle to those laser-guided bombs of theirs. I’ve only read about it in a Western defense magazine, so I’ve no idea if it’s properly operational. But I think it’s called HALO — High Altitude Low Opening…it’s a parachute system that allows a man to dive out of an aircraft at thirty-five thousand feet and free-fall, homing in on a ground beam. At one thousand feet his ’chute opens, and he lands exactly where they had planned. Takes a lot of training…and, I don’t expect it would be so difficult to drop military materiel in canisters in the same way…homing in on a beam, rather than on a preset building or ship, like a bomb, or a missile. I’m talking about dropping the canister, literally, from nearly five miles up onto a target thirty feet wide.”

“Christ!” said Lieutenant Commander Levitsky. “I didn’t see that article, sir.”

“Well, I don’t even know if the system is up and working yet, but it’s a thought, eh?”

“Yessir. I’ll get onto it, see if I can find more about it.”

By lunchtime on June 12, the Yuri Andropov was still anchored at the Green Stop, and the passengers were growing restless. Many of them had accompanied the crew on their search for Pieter and Torbin, and the five missing Americans. Several search parties walked within thirty feet of the two corpses hidden in the high reeds under the flattened rubber hull of the lost inflatable outboard. But there was no sign of any of them. They had simply vanished.

Colonel Borsov assumed command of the search but realized he had a duty to his other passengers, and announced they would leave at 1400. He called the River Police and reported his seven missing persons. He was ordered to report in again when the Andropov arrived in St. Petersburg, thirty-six hours hence.

By 1600 Admiral Rankov had a considerably expanded dossier on the disaster on the Belomorski Canal. Ivan Volkov had confirmed the location of the convoy’s overnight stop across the lake from the entrance to the northern section of the canal. He also confirmed that the rear barge was not connected to the lead Tolkach, and he offered a firsthand account of the deep rumbling sound he heard beneath the barges, and the more obvious sound of explosions beneath the waterline of the rear barge.

Ivan had seen the final barge go over, hurling the submarine first into the bank, and then into the water. He added there was no doubt in his mind that the bottoms of the barges had been blown out, two on the starboard side, one on the port side. This had caused them to capsize, with swift and deadly force.

By 1800 Admiral Rankov was back in his office, having met with the Commander in Chief and his political masters. To a man they were incredulous that the United States could have pulled off something of this magnitude right in the middle of Russia. For the first thirty minutes they were inclined to believe it was simply impossible, but Admiral Rankov was insistent that the US President’s National Security Adviser was well capable of such an outrage and was almost certainly behind the destruction of the Kilos.

In the end it was agreed that Admiral Rankov should pursue his inquiries vigorously, with the single objective of finding proof against the United States, and then hanging the USA out to dry, as lawless gangsters, in front of the entire world.

Admiral Zhang Yushu, Commander in Chief of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy, could not believe what he was hearing. But the Naval attache in the Russian Embassy in Beijing had no doubt — the three Kilos that had left Nizhny Novgorod on the first stage of the journey to China had been destroyed in some kind of an accident in the Belomorski Canal. It was not an alarming situation. They had not been fired upon nor hit with a missile, nor even a bomb. They had simply rolled off the decks of the Russian barges and were now resting on the bottom of the canal itself. The Chinese order, for those three submarines, at least, would never be filled. Essentially, they were write- offs.

Admiral Zhang listened to the careful, emotionless words of the interpreter. There was no doubt, whatsoever, about what had happened. The three Kilos on their way up to Severodvinsk to meet the Chinese crews and engineers were never going to get there. He replaced the telephone and cursed silently to himself. The Kilos had, he knew, become virtually his personal responsibility since the loss of the last two. There were many service chiefs and politicians in China who instinctively distanced themselves from projects that might go wrong, as this one certainly had.

Zhang, however, was made of steely stuff. The one thought he had was that the Americans had wiped out three more, as they had wiped out the last two. They had practically promised as much to the Russian Ambassador in Washington. He knew that, because Admiral Rankov had told him so, months ago. There could surely be no doubt now. Washington, it seemed, was prepared to go to any lengths to prevent the delivery of the Kilos. Which put the Commander in Chief of the People’s Navy in very moderate shape politically.

The Paramount Ruler had made it clear he was not interested in a fight of any description with the United States. He saw no reason to become involved in anything that would damage trade relations between the two countries: trade was making everyone richer than ever before on the Chinese mainland.

Zhang knew he would get scant support from any military or naval leaders if he suggested a strike against the United States in justifiable retaliation. In fact the most he could hope for would be a green light to proceed with the delivery of the final two submarines, which he personally desperately wanted.

He first needed to sort out the money problem. His government had made a $300 million down payment on the three Kilos. A further $300 million was due on completion of sea trials in the Barents Sea this summer, and the final $300 million upon their arrival in Chinese waters. The Russians were not going to be overjoyed at paying that first $300 million back. But those were terms the Chinese Navy must demand. Only when that hurdle had been safely negotiated would Admiral Zhang feel he was safe in making further demands for heavy Russian warship escorts for the final two Kilos — all the way back to Shanghai.

Meanwhile there were he knew many of his peers who thought the Russian diesel-electrics were much more trouble than they could possibly be worth. In Beijing, the project would now hang in the balance. If the cautious elder statesmen prevailed, Arnold Morgan would be proved right. “If you slam ’em hard enough, and seriously enough, the Chinese will probably back right down, and just accept we’re not going to let ’em have those submarines.”

Admiral Zhang knew, perhaps above all other men, precisely how hard they had in fact been slammed. And, like Admiral Rankov, he knew, beyond personal doubt, which nation had done the slamming.

In the days that followed, Admiral Rankov worked tirelessly in pursuit of an American mistake. He thought he was onto something when his investigators discovered five executives of a Florida citrus fruit company had entered Russia on a commercial jet through St. Petersburg, and had apparently not left on the date specified on their entry visas.

He did not know that the five Americans had left on a mysterious fishing boat on the very night of their entry, in the small hours, out of the little port of Kurgolovo, on a remote headland eighty miles east of the city. In time their passports and visas would be used by five other Americans, who between them knew nothing about growing fruit.

It came to light that the five Americans had indeed left Russia, twenty-four hours late, on a private corporate jet from St. Petersburg to London. There were no other US citizens in the last couple of months who had overstayed their welcome, or were otherwise unaccounted for.

It was not until June 19 that something came to light involving the missing Americans. Apparently four men from the Minneapolis area, and a woman from Chicago, had disappeared from a tour ship, the Yuri Andropov, in the northern reaches of Lake Onega. Furthermore they had gone missing two evenings before the barges had been blitzed in the canal. Rankov discovered this through the US embassy in Moscow as a