Over at the London Stock Exchange, the Footsie had no idea which way to turn. Some oil shares were climbing, five and six percent every half hour, as soon as brokers realized who would cash in on the West Coast calamity and who would not.
But as rumors of burgeoning oil prices swept the trading floor, a whole raft of stocks crashed. Especially the oil giants whose businesses had a bedrock in the Alaskan fields. Big oil consumers, especially airlines, took their worst hits since 2001.
The price of electricity in the American West hovered in a no man's land of doubt, and investors were uncertain whether the major power suppliers would somehow cash in on the disaster, or go bust. In one nerve- racking hour, shares in British Petroleum went up an astounding 10 percent, then fell back to where they opened, and then crashed 10 percent.
One broker who had shorted them on the bell, and then sold high before they rose again, was seen standing in shock, threatening suicide after a $12 million career-wrecking loss on behalf of a client.
Over at Lloyds of London, the insurance market had a collective heart attack, with grotesque visions of the crash of the 1990s standing once more, starkly, before the brokers. Losses in the little city of Valdez would be shuddering, but the breached pipeline with its colossal overtones of environmental damage, threatened to rival the gigantic claims that erupted after the Exxon Valdez catastrophe in Prince William Sound in 1992.
Cocooned in the control room of the Barracuda, 1,000 feet deep, 100 miles off the coast of California, General Rashood had not an inkling of the havoc he had wrought. He and Shakira, sharing their tiny office/bedroom, felt safe behind the slow, cautious driving of Ben Badr. And the submarine was in excellent shape, moving through the quiet, deep caverns of the oceans, with the minimum of stress on the turbines, the reactor running silkily, watched by a top-class team of newly qualified Iranian Nuclear Engineers.
Captain Badr's navigator had them on a course of 180 degrees, running directly south through the Pacific, straight down the 128' W line of longitude. The Dixon Entrance stands just north of the 54th parallel, and their next destination was slightly north of the 42nd. That gave them twelve degrees of latitude to cover, 720 nautical miles. They were making only 120 miles a day at their low speed of five knots, and Ravi and Ben estimated they would arrive on station in the small hours of Friday morning, March 7. They would be, predictably, 180 miles off the coast of the State of Oregon, but, unpredictably, almost 300 miles south of their target.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe scarcely slept, spending eighteen hours a day in his office, waiting for a SOSUS heads-up that someone had heard something, somewhere, that there was a Russian submarine on the loose.
But there was only silence. Not a sound from the Barracuda. Indeed, on the international stage, the only loud and significant sound came from Admiral Arnold Morgan, personally railing at the Russian Navy Headquarters in Moscow, demanding to speak to the Admiral of the Fleet, Vitaly Rankov.
Admiral Rankov, a seasoned and wily operator, found himself in a tight spot. He had already guessed the Barracuda had done its job on the far side of the Pacific, but he had much to protect. The culprit for these unprovoked atrocities on the American economy was a Russian-built, Russian-owned submarine, now based in the Pacific Fleet at Petropavlovsk.
But Vitaly had his story in disciplined order. He would reveal the submarine had been sold to the Chinese, and was believed to be making its way down to their Southern Fleet Headquarters in Zhenjiang, on the northeast corner of the great tropical island of Hainan. So far as he knew, there were no Russian personnel on board.
His policy was to duck and dive, avoiding a salvo of phone calls from the redoubtable Arnold Morgan, though he realized this would not work for long.
He actually kept it up for thirty-six hours, until noon on Thursday, March 6, by which time Vice Admiral Morgan had yelled down the phone to Moscow at six different aides. Finally, he had the President of the United States call the President of Russia and demand that Rankov speak to the White House immediately.
The instruction from the Great White Chief of all the Russians to his Naval Supreme Commander was succinct: Admiral Rankov: I have been asked by the U.S. President to ensure you speak to his National Security Adviser on an important matter this day. Please do so.
It was thus with a heavy heart that the Admiral of the Russian Fleet, at three o'clock that afternoon, had his assistant call the White House and connect him to his oldest and most dangerous nemesis, the most persistent, ill tempered, gratingly powerful opponent in the world.
'Arnold! What a nice surprise to hear you again. It's been too long.'
'Thirty-six hours too long, insincere Soviet sailor.' Arnold was always delighted with alliteration of that music-hall quality. 'You are a devious son of a bitch. And you have deliberately not answered my calls, or my messages. I was just beginning to think you might be avoiding me.'
Admiral Rankov was unable to supress a deep chuckle. Despite his uneasiness with Admiral Morgan, he was always amused by him, and actually liked him very much. They had met on several occasions over the years, even dined together in Washington, London, and once in Moscow. 'I know, I know,' he said. 'I was avoiding you. Mainly because I sensed you were going to give me a very hard time, about matters over which I have no control.'
'I presume you are still head of that junkyard Navy of yours?'
At which point the two old Intelligence sparring partners both laughed at the American's incorrigible rudeness and the fact that the conversation had returned to its usual standard of wit.
'Arnold, look, seriously. I know what you are going to say. You know we made a Fleet Exchange, sending that old Barracuda to Petropavlovsk. You also know it left, and headed south. You also know, like we do, there is a large financial claim from a Japanese fishing boat that was snagged by a submarine just a few miles to the north. Same time. Same day. Am I correct?'
'You are.'
'And now you are going to ask me why our submarine dived after making course south, and then did an about-face underwater and went north? Right?'
'Right. There was no other submarine operational within a thousand miles. The goddamned sushi ship was hooked by the Barracuda.'
'Arnold, what you do not know — and why should you? — is that we sold the Barracuda to the Chinese. It was just too damned expensive for us to run.'
'Well, that's very interesting, Vitaly. Are there any Russians aboard?'
'None.'
'Well, where the hell's it going?'
'I was told Zhenjiang. But we have no way of knowing. The ship is no longer our property.'
'Vitaly, my main question is even more serious. And I am asking you to give me a straight answer.'
'If I can.'
'Did you guys ever complete the building of the second Barracuda, Hull K-240?'
'Arnold, I was up in the northern yard at Araguba just six months ago, and I saw that ship in its covered dock, with a number of plates missing from the casing. I believe we used it for spare parts for the Tula, the one we just sold. So far as I know, Hull K-240 never went to sea. Why?'
'Is it still there… in Araguba?'
'I can't swear to it. But no one has told me it has been scrapped, or sold. If I can find out anything, do you want me to get back to you?'
'That would be good of you. And remember, I just want to know if you sold one Barracuda, or two, to the even more devious Chinese.'
'I understand, Arnold. Leave it with me.'
Arnold Morgan quietly said good-bye, and put down the phone. But he sensed a kind of edgy formality in the voice of the Russian Navy boss. Arnold had an actor's gift for recalling the rhythms and reactions of people and their speech. In his mind, he believed he should have heard something quite different from Admiral Rankov.
Something much more like, Okay, Arnie. I'll check it right now. Hull K-240… where is it? That's what you want to know. No problem. I'll be back to you in ten minutes.
Instead, it was, IF I can find out anything… do you want me to get back to you?
'The actual HEAD of the entire Russian Navy,' growled Arnold. ' 'IF I can find out whether we still own a $500 million nuclear submarine!' Vitaly, you bastard, I think you are lying. I think you know full well whether your fucking rattletrap Navy still owns the second Barracuda. But, for whatever reason, you are not telling me.'
The Admiral was, however, still very nearly handcuffed by the situation. He could think of no other method by
