Debt of Honor

remember? Rain on the surface is on the thousand-hertz line. So, we look for rain'—Jones slid a weather photo on the table—'where there ain't no rain. Then we look for sixty-hertz hits, little ones, short ones, brief ones, things you might otherwise ignore, that happen to be where the rain is. They use sixty-hertz generators and motors, right? Then we look for transients, just little dots that look like background noise, that are also where the rain is. Like this.' He marked the sheet with a red pen, then looked to the station's command master chief, who was leaning over the other side of the table like a curious god.

'I heard stories about you when I was working the RefTra at Dam Neck. I thought they were sea stories.'

'Got a smoke?' the only civilian in the room asked. The master chief handed one over. The antismoking signs were gone and the ashtrays were out. SOSUS was at war, and perhaps the rest of PacFlt would soon catch up.

Jesus, I'm home, Jones told himself. 'Well, you know the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale.'

'What's that, sir?' Boomer asked.

'A fairy tale starts, 'Once upon a time,' ' Jones said with a smile, marking another 60Hz hit on the sheet.

'And a sea story starts, 'No shit,' ' the master chief concluded the joke.

Except this little fucker really was that good. 'I think you have enough to run a plot, Dr. Jones.'

'I think we have a track on an SSK, Master Chief.'

'Shame we can't prosecute.'

Ron nodded slowly. 'Yeah, me, too, but now we know we can get hits on the guys. It's still going to be a mother for P-3's to localize them. They're good boats, and that's a fact.' They couldn't get too carried away. All SOSUS did was to generate lines of bearing. If more than one hydrophone set got a hit on the same sound source, you could rapidly triangulate bearings into locations, but those locations were circles, not points, and the circles were as much as twenty miles across. It was just physics, neither friend nor enemy. The sounds that most easily traveled long distances were of the lower frequencies, and for any sort of wave, only the higher frequencies gave the best resolution.

'We know where to look the next time he snorts, too. Anyway, you can call Fleet Operations and tell them there's nobody close to the carriers. Here, here, here, surface groups.' He made marks on the paper. 'Also heading west at good speed, and not being real covert about it. All target-track bearings are opening. It's a complete disengagement. They're not looking for any more trouble.'

'Maybe that's good.'

Jones crushed out the cigarette. 'Yeah, Master Chief, maybe it is, if the flags get their shit together.'

The funny part was that things had actually calmed down. Morning TV coverage of the Wall Street crash was clinically precise, and the analysis exquisite, probably better than Americans were getting at home, Clark thought, what with all the economics professors doing the play-by-play, along with a senior banker for color commentary. Perhaps, a newspaper editorialized, America will rethink her stance vis-a-vis Japan. Was it not clear that the two countries genuinely needed each other, especially now, and that a strong Japan served American interests as well as local ones? Prime Minister Goto was quoted in a conciliatory way, though not in front of a camera, in language that was for him decidedly unusual and widely covered for that reason.

'Fucking Twilight Zone,' Chavez observed in a quiet moment, breaking language cover because he just had to. What the hell, he thought, they were under Russian operational control now. What rules did matter now?

'Russkiy,' his senior replied tolerantly.

'Da, tovarisch,' was the grumbled reply. 'Do you have any idea what's going on. Is it a war or not?'

'The rules sure are funny,' Clark said, in English, he realized. It's getting to me, too.

There were other gaijin back on the street, most of them apparently Americans, and the looks they were getting were back to the ordinary suspicion and curiosity, the current hostility level down somewhat from the previous week.

'So what do we do?'

'We try the Interfax number our friend gave us.' Clark had his report all typed up. It was the only thing he knew to do, except for keeping his contacts active and fishing for information. Surely Washington knew what he had to tell them, he thought, going back into the hotel. The clerk smiled and bowed, a little more politely this time, as they headed to the elevator. Two minutes later they were in the room. Clark took the laptop from its carry-case, inserted the phone plug in the back, and switched it on. Another minute, and the internal modem dialed the number he'd gotten over breakfast, linking to a line across the Sea of Japan to the Siberian mainland, thence to Moscow, he supposed. He heard the electronic trilling of a ringing phone and waited for linkup.

The station chief had gotten over the cringing associated with having a Russian intelligence officer in the embassy communications room, but he hadn't quite gotten to the whimsy stage yet. The noise from the computer startled him.

'Very clever technique,' the visitor said.

'We try.'

Anyone who had ever used a modem would recognize the sound, the rasp of running water, or perhaps a floor-polishing brush, just a digital hiss, really, of two electronic units attempting to synchronize themselves so that data could be exchanged. Sometimes it took but a few seconds, sometimes as many as five or even ten. In fact, it only took one second or so with these units, and the remaining hiss was actually the random-appearing digital code of 19,200 characters of information crossing the fiberoptic line per second—first in one direction, then the other. When the real transmission was concluded, formal lockup was achieved, and the guy at the other end sent his twenty column-inches for the day. Just to be on the safe side, the Russians would make sure that the report would be carried in two papers the next day, on page 3 in both cases. No sense in being too obvious.

Then came the hard part for the CIA station chief. On command, he printed two copies of the same report, one of which went to the RVS officer. Was Mary Pat going through change-of-life or something?

'His Russian is very literary, even classical. Who taught him my language?'

'I honestly don't know,' the station chief lied, successfully as it turned out. The hell of it was, the Russian was right. That occasioned a frown.

'Want me to help with the translation?'

Shit. He smiled. 'Sure, why not?'

'Ryan.' A whole five hours of sleep, Jack grumped, lifting the secure carphone. Well, at least he wasn't doing the driving.

'Mary Pat here. We have something. It'll be on your desk when you get there.'

'How good?'

'It's a start,' the DDO said. She was very economical in her use of words. Nobody really trusted radiophones, secure or not.

'Hello, Dr. Ryan. I'm Andrea Price.' The agent was already dressed in a lab coat, complete with picture-pass clipped to the lapel, which she held up. 'My uncle is a doctor, GP in Wisconsin. I think he'd like this.' She smiled.

'Do I have anything to worry about?'

'I really don't think so,' Agent Price said, still smiling. Protectees didn't like to see worried security personnel, she knew.

'What about my children?'

'There are two agents outside their school, and one more is in the house across from the day-care center for your little one,' the agent explained. 'Please don't worry. They pay us to be paranoid, and we're almost always wrong, but it's like in your business. You always want to be wrong on the safe side, right?'

'And my visitors?' Cathy asked.

'Can I make a suggestion?'

'Yes.'

'Get them all Hopkins lab coats, souvenirs, like. I'll eyeball them all when they change.' That was pretty clever, Cathy Ryan thought.

'You're carrying a gun?'