“Negative, Captain,” a lieutenant answered.
“I wonder if those things are worth the trouble…” the executive officer groused.
“They worked the last time.”
“We had calm seas overhead then. How often are the seas calm in the North Pacific in winter?”
“It could still tell us something. We must use every trick we have. Why are you not optimistic?”
“Even Ramius only tracked an Ohio once, and that was on builder's trials, when they had the shaft problem. And even then, he only held the contact for — what? Seventy minutes.”
“We had this one before.”
“True enough, Captain.” The Starpom tapped a pencil on the chart.
Dubinin thought about his intelligence briefing on the enemy — old habits were hard to break. Harrison Sharpe Ricks, Captain, Naval Academy, in his second missile-submarine command, reportedly a brilliant engineer and technician, a likely candidate for higher command. A hard and demanding taskmaster, highly regarded in his navy. He'd made a mistake before, and was unlikely to make another, Dubinin told himself.
“Fifty thousand yards, exactly,” Ensign Shaw reported.
“This guy's not doing any Crazy Ivans,” Claggett thought for the first time.
“He's not expecting to be hunted himself, is he?” Ricks asked.
“I guess not, but his tail's not as good as he thinks it is.” The Akula was doing a ladder-search pattern. The long legs were on a roughly south-west-to-north-east vector, and at the end of each he shifted down south-east to the next leg, with an interval between search legs of about fifty thousand yards, twenty-five nautical miles. That gave a notional range of about thirteen miles to the Russian's towed-array sonar. At least, Claggett thought, that's what the intelligence guys would have said.
“You know, I think we'll hold at fifty-K yards, just to play it on the safe side,” Ricks announced, after a moment's reflection. “This guy is a lot quieter than I expected.”
“Plant noises are down quite a bit, aren't they? If this guy was creeping instead of trying to cover ground…” Claggett was pleased that his Captain was speaking like his conservative-engineer self again. He wasn't especially surprised. When push came to shove, Ricks reverted to type, but that was all right with the XO, who didn't think it was especially prudent to play fast-attack with a billion-dollar boomer.
“We could still hold him at forty, thirty-five tops.”
“Think so? How much will his tail's performance improve with a slower speed?”
“Good point. it'll be some, but intelligence calls it a thin-line array like ours… probably not all that much. Even so, we're getting a good profile on this bird, aren't we?” Ricks asked rhetorically. He'd get a gold star in his copybook for this.
“So, what do you think, MP?” Jack asked Mrs. Foley. He held the translation in his hand. She'd opted for the original Russian-language document.
“Hey, I recruited him, Jack. He's my boy.”
Ryan checked his watch; it was just about time. Sir Basil Charleston was nothing if not punctual. His secure direct-line phone rang right on the hour.
“Ryan.”
“Bas here.”
“What gives, man?”
“That thing we talked out, we had our chap look into it. Nothing at all, my boy.”
“Not even that our impressions were incorrect?” Jack asked, his eyes screwed tightly shut, as though to keep the news out.
“Correct, Jack, not even that. I admit I find that slightly curious, but it is plausible, if not likely, that our chap should not know this.”
“Thanks for trying, pal. We owe you one.”
“Sorry we could not be of help.” The line went dead.
It was the worst possible news, Ryan thought. He stared briefly at the ceiling.
“The Brits have been unable to confirm or deny SPINNAKER 's allegations,” Jack announced. “What's that leave us with?”
“It's really like this?” Ben Goodley asked. “It all comes down to opinion?”
“Ben, if we were really that smart at reading fortunes, we'd be making fortunes in the stock market,” Ryan said gruffly.
“But you did!” Goodley pointed out.
“I got lucky on a few hot issues.” Ryan dismissed the observation. “Mary Pat, what do you think?”
Mrs. Foley looked tired, but then she had an infant to worry about. Jack thought he should tell her to take it easier. “I have to back up my agent, Jack. You know that. He's our best source of political intelligence. He gets in to see Narmonov alone. That's why he's so valuable, and that's why his stuff has always been hard to back up — but it's never been wrong, has it?”
“The scary part is that he's starting to convince me.”
“Why scary, Dr. Ryan?”
Jack lit a cigarette. “'Cause I know Narmonov. That man could have made me disappear one cold night outside o' Moscow. We cut a deal, shook on it, and that was that. Takes a very confident man to do something like that. If he has lost that confidence, then… then the whole thing could come apart, rapidly and unpredictably. Can you think of anything scarier than that?” Ryan's eyes swept the room.
“Not hardly,” agreed the head of the Intelligence Directorate's Russian Department. “I think we have to go with it.”
“So do I,” Mary Pat agreed.
“Ben?” Jack asked. “You believed this guy from the beginning. What he says backs up your position from up at Harvard.”
Dr. Benjamin Goodley didn't like being cornered like that. He had learned a hard but important lesson in his months in CIA: it was one thing to form an opinion in an academic community, to discuss options around the lunch tables in the Harvard faculty club, but it was different here. From these opinions national policy was made. And that, he realized, was what being captured by the system actually meant.
“I hate to say this, but I've changed my mind. There may be a dynamic here we haven't examined.”
“What might that be?” the head of the Russian Department asked.
“Just consider this abstractly. If Narmonov goes down, who replaces him?”
“Kadishev is one of the possibilities, say one chance in three or so,” Mary Pat answered.
“In academia — hell, anywhere — isn't that a conflict of interest?”
“M.P.?” Ryan asked, shifting his eyes.
“Okay, so what? When has he ever lied to us before?”
Goodley decided to run with it, pretending this was an academic discussion. “Mrs. Foley, I was detailed to look for indications that SPINNAKER was wrong. I've checked everything I've had access to. The only thing I've found is a slight change in the tone of his reports over the last few months. The way he uses language is subtly different. His statements are more positive, less speculative in some areas. Now, that may fit his reports — the content of them, I mean — but… there may be some meaning in that.”
“You're basing your evaluation on how he dots his i's?” The Russian expert demanded with a snort. “Kid, we don't do that sort of work here.”
“Well, I have to take this one downtown,” Ryan said. “I have to tell the President that we think he's right. I want to get Andrews and Kantrowitz in here to backstop us — objections?” There were none. “Okay, thank you. Ben, could you stay for a moment? Mary Pat, take a long weekend. That's an order.”
“She's colicky, and I haven't been getting much sleep,” Mrs. Foley explained.
“So, have Ed take the night duty,” Jack suggested.
“Ed doesn't have tits. I nurse, remember?”
“M.P., has it ever occurred to you that nursing is a conspiracy of lazy men?” Ryan asked with a grin.
The baleful look in her eyes concealed her good humor. “Yeah, at about two every morning. See you Monday.”
