“Tried to?”
“Did I ever tell you I was a good football player? I tackled him, a little too enthusiastically. Broke his kneecap, as a matter of fact.” Dubinin smiled, remembering the injury he'd inflicted on the worthless bastard. Concrete sidewalks were so much harder than a grassy football pitch…
“Fifty percent.”
“Then what happened?”
The embassy people went mad about it. The ambassador screamed a lot. Thought they'd send me right home. But the local police talked about giving me a medal. It was hushed up, and I was never asked to be a diplomat again.“ Dubinin laughed out loud. ”I won. Eighteen knots.'
“Why did you interfere?”
“I was young and foolish,” Dubinin explained. “Never occurred to me that it might all be some CIA trick — that's what the ambassador was worried about. It wasn't, just a young criminal and a frail black woman. His kneecap shattered quite badly. I wonder how well he runs now…? And if he really were CIA, that's one less spy we have to worry about.”
“Sixty percent power, still very steady,” the engineer called. “No pressure fluctuations at all.”
“Twenty-three knots. The next forty percent power doesn't do very much for us… and the flow noise off the hull starts building up at this point. Run it up smartly, Vanya!”
“Aye, Captain!”
“What's the fastest you've ever had him?”
“Thirty-two at max-rated power. Thirty-three on overload.”
“There's talk about a new hull paint… ”
“The stuff the English invented? Intelligence says it adds more than a knot to the American hunter submarines.”
“That's right,” the Admiral confirmed. “I hear we have the formula, but actually making it is very difficult, and applying it properly is even more so.”
“Anything over twenty-five and you run the risk of stripping the anechoic tiles off the hull. Had that happen once when I was Starpom on the Sverdlovskiy Komsomolets… ” Dubinin shook his head. “Like being inside a drum, the way those damned rubber slabs pounded the hull.”
“Not much we can do about that, I'm afraid.”
“Seventy-five percent power.”
“Take those tiles off and I get another knot.”
“You don't really advocate that?”
Dubinin shook his head. “No. If a torpedo goes into the water, that could be the difference between life and death.”
Conversation stopped at that point. In ten minutes, power had reached a hundred percent, fifty-thousand horsepower. The pump noise was quite loud now, but it was still possible to hear a person speaking. With the old pump this power level was like listening to a rock band, Dubinin remembered, you could feel the sound rippling through your body. Not now, and the rafting of the pump body… the yard commander had promised him a vast reduction in radiated noise. He had not been boasting. Ten minutes later, he'd seen and heard everything he'd needed.
“Power down,” Dubinin commanded.
“Well, Valentin Borissovich?”
“KGB stole this from the Americans?”
“That is my understanding,” the Admiral said.
“I may kiss the next spy I meet.”
The Motor Vessel George McReady lay alongside the pier loading cargo. She was a large ship, ten years old, driven by large, low-speed marine diesels, and designed as a timber carrier. She could carry thirty thousand tons of finished lumber or, as was the case now, logs. The Japanese preferred to process the lumber themselves for the most part. It kept the processing money in their country instead of having to export it. At least an American-flag vessel was being used to do the delivery, a concession that had required ten months of negotiations, Japan could be a fun place to visit, though rather expensive.
Under the watchful eyes of the First Officer, gantry cranes lifted the logs from trucks and lowered them into the built-for-the-purpose holds. The process was remarkably speedy. Automation of cargo-loading was probably the most important development in the commercial shipping business. George M could be fully loaded in less than forty hours, and off-loaded in thirty-six, allowing the ship to return to sea very rapidly, but denying her crew the chance to do very much in whatever port they might be visiting. The loss of income for waterfront bars and other businesses that catered to sailors was not a matter of great concern to the shipowners, who did not make money when their hulls were tied alongside the pier.
“Pete, got the weather,” the Third Officer announced. “Could be better.”
The First Officer looked at the chart. “Wow!”
“Yeah, a monster Siberian low forming up. Gonna get bumpy a couple of days out. It's gonna be too big to dodge, too.”
The First Officer whistled at the numbers. “Don't forget your 'scope patch, Jimmy.”
“Right. How much deck cargo?”
“Just those boys over there.” He pointed.
The other man grunted, then picked up a pair of binoculars from the holder. “Christ, they're chained together!”
“That's why we can't strike 'em below.”
“Outstanding,” the junior man observed.
“I already talked to the bosun about it. We'll have them tied down nice and tight.”
“Good idea, Pete. If this storm builds like I expect, you'll be able to surf down there.”
“Captain still on the beach?”
“Right, he's due back at fourteen hundred.”
“Fueling complete. ChEng will have his diesels on line at seventeen hundred. Depart at sixteen-thirty?”
“That's right.”
“Damn, a guy hardly has time to get laid anymore.”
“I'll tell the captain about the weather forecast. It might make us late in Japan.”
“Cap'n'll love that.”
“Won't we all?”
“Hey, if it screws up our alongside time, maybe I can…”
“You and me both, buddy.” The First Officer grinned. Both men were single.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” Fromm asked. He leaned down, staring at the metallic mass through the Lexan sheeting. The manipulator arm had detached the plutonium from the spindle and moved it for a visual inspection that wasn't really necessary, but the plutonium had to be moved for the next part of the finishing process anyway, and Fromm wanted to see the thing close up. He shone a small, powerful flashlight on the metal, but then switched it off. The reflection of the overhead lights was enough.
“It really is amazing,” Ghosn said.
What they looked at might easily have been a piece of blown glass, so smooth it appeared. In fact it was far smoother than that. The uniformity of the outside surface was so exact that the greatest distorting effect came from gravity. Whatever imperfections there might have been were far too small to see with the naked eye, and were definitely below the design tolerances Fromm had established when he'd worked the hydrocodes on the minicomputer.
The outside of the folded cylinder was perfect, reflecting light like some sort of eccentric lens. As the arm rotated it around the long axis, the placement and size of the reflected ceiling lights did not move or waver. Even the German found that remarkable.
“I would never have believed we could do so well,” Ghosn said.
Fromm nodded. “Such things were not possible until quite recently. The air-bearing-lathe technology is hardly
