America

'The responsibility for security breaches will be on your head, not mine.' First and foremost, Avery Edmond DeGarmo was a bureaucrat. 'I want that clearly understood.'

Jake gave a curt nod.

'What was the question?' said DeGarmo.

'The CIA trained this crew?'

'What crew?'

'The crew that hijacked America.'

'I don't know who hijacked that ship. Do you?'

'The FBI agent in charge has informed us that these were the men.'

'But you don't know for a fact.'

'I am not going to split legal hairs with you this morning, sir, or debate the meaning of 'is.' Did or did not the CIA train a team to run a sub with minimum manning?'

'I have answered that question. Yes.'

'Why?'

'The operation was properly authorized and funded. We did what we were told to do.'

'What was the objective of the operation?'

'To steal a Russian submarine.'

'Was that Operation Blackbeard?'

'Yes.'

'Why did the CIA want a Russian submarine?'

DeGarmo shifted his weight in his chair. He leaned forward, played with the letters, tapped his fingers on them. Both men were well aware that this information was available elsewhere. Finally DeGarmo said, 'For several years the Russians have been working on revolutionary new torpedoes. The technology, we believe, uses supercavitation and rocket propulsion to drive a torpedo through the water within a bubble, reducing drag dramatically. Our theoretical physicists think the technology might ultimately yield a torpedo capable of a thousand knots. The Russians aren't that far along yet. We hope. They have produced a torpedo that uses the first generation of this technology, we believe. They call it the 'Shkyal' or 'Squall.' The Kurst{ was testing this torpedo when the thing exploded, fatally damaging the submarine.'

Jake had seen classified summaries speculating that this was the case. So far, DeGarmo hadn't told him anything he didn't know. 'We are doing similar research and having our problems,' DeGarmo added. This Jake didn't know. 'We wanted to see what the Russians really have, if anything.'

It went on like this for five minutes before DeGarmo agreed to make the complete, raw files on the men the CIA trained available that afternoon for Commander Tarkington to study. 'We'll need copies of those files,' Jake added, 'and I would appreciate your staff making them and sending the copies over. For now, however, a look at those files will be sufficient.'

It took another minute to persuade DeGarmo to have his staff run the copy machine. Then Jake asked who authorized the operation to steal a Russian sub.

'The national command authority, of course.'

'Who wanted this information?'

'The navy, primarily. The planning people at DOD. My staff. Everyone was interested.'

'Admiral Stalnaker?'

DeGarmo nodded.

'Why a team of Russians and Germans? Why not Americans, who presumably would have been more trustworthy?'

'The committee thought that the difficulties involved in getting Americans onto a Russian naval base where they could get access to a submarine with Shkyal aboard lowered the probability of success to an unacceptable level. If the Russians caught these people, the fallout would be manageable if they were former Soviet-bloc sailors but damn near catastrophic if they were Americans. And of course there was the deniability issue, which I think was crucial to getting it approved.'

'How were these men recruited?'

'We went after ex-submariners who spoke Russian. The Germans served in the East German Navy and spoke fluent Russian.'

'Were they reliable?'

DeGarmo's habitual frown deepened. 'In my opinion, Blackbeard was flawed from the start. The minutes of those meetings will prove that I was against it from the get-go. These people couldn't be trusted. That risk was significant.' He went on, explained how the crew was isolated, held incommunicado during training.

'The operation was ultimately scrubbed.'

Another nod.

'Why?'

DeGarmo shrugged, shifted his weight while he considered what to say. The thought occurred to Jake that this was one of the least loquacious men he had ever met.

'I am not going to respond to that. Suffice it to say that Black-beard was canceled. The reason is not germane to your investigation, in my opinion.'

'Who canceled it?'

'The intelligence committee.'

'Did the Russians find out about it? 'I'm not going to comment.' DeGarmo looked at Jake as if he were an obtuse child. 'Ask someone else.'

Jake studied DeGarmo's face. 'If someone else can tell me, why not you?'

A low growl. The CIA director pursed his lips. 'That fact couldn't conceivably be relevant to your investigation.'

Jake Grafton stared into the director's eyes, unwilling to break contact. 'How good is your information?'

The director leaned forward and waggled a finger. 'You are in an area that… is… not… relevant to your investigation.'

'But the operation was canceled for a credible reason? Or reasons?'

'Obviously.'

'Why didn't the CIA seek other ways to get information on the Shkyal and supercavitation?'

'We tried, obviously. And continue to try. The difficulty is that credible intelligence about Russian research is practically impossible to obtain. Under the Communists, Russia was a society as closed as a locked bank vault, with half the population employed in watching the other half. That's changed since the collapse of communism. In Russia today there are countless people anxious to sell all sorts of technical information. Everything is for sale. You can buy boxes full of secrets on Moscow street corners. Criminals and con artists are busy as beavers. Since the Foreign Intelligence Service can't plug all the real leaks, they are also busy selling bogus stuff. Apparently creating classified files to sell to credulous foreigners is the only growth industry in the country. So you negotiate like hell and fork over and take home your nifty treasure map and add it to the pile you already have.

'Consequently, stealing a submarine looked like a risk worth taking. If we could pull it off, the payoff would be real hardware that could be properly evaluated, not boxes full of fiction. The decision makers thought that, all things considered, the potential payoff justified the risk.' He stopped speaking, yet since he looked as if he might say more, Jake remained silent.

After a moment's thought, DeGarmo added, 'In an era of tight defense budgets worldwide, those countries doing research are trying to make every dollar count. It isn't enough merely to improve weapons, to spend billions for five or ten or twenty percent more capability; the dollars are too hard to come by. This reality forces us to search for technologies that have the promise of leapfrogging whole generations of weapons development. The Shkval is a quantum leap in torpedo technology, five times faster than any other existing torpedo: If it becomes operational we have no defense against it. Whoever possesses it will have a huge military advantage. Perhaps an overwhelming one, unless we can find out exactly how it works and develop defensive countermeasures.'

Here DeGarmo leaned forward. 'This isn't a game, Admiral. We can't take the risk that potential opponents might bring weapons to a future battlefield that give them a winning military advantage. The atomic bomb was such