“We might be able to,” Foster said neutrally, “but as you say, the crew is a complication. I presume we’ll have the chance to look her over?”
“You mean conduct a quarantine inspection, check her for seaworthiness, maybe make sure they’re not smuggling drugs into the country?” The president grinned. “I think we might arrange that. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. There’s a lot of ground to cover before we get to that point. What about our allies?”
“The English just had one of their carriers over here. Could you use her, Dan?” General Hilton asked.
“If they let us borrow her, yes. We just finished that ASW exercise south of Bermuda, and the Brits acquitted themselves well. We could use Invincible, the four escorts, and the three attack boats. The force is being recalled at high speed because of this.”
“Do they know of this development, Judge?” the president asked.
“Not unless they’ve developed it themselves. This information is only a few hours old.” Moore did not reveal that Sir Basil had his own ear in the Kremlin. Ryan didn’t know much about it himself, had only heard some disconnected rumblings. “With your permission, I have asked Admiral Greer to be ready to fly to England to brief the prime minister.”
“Why not just send—”
Judge Moore was shaking his head. “Mr. President, this information—let’s say it’s only delivered by hand.” Eyebrows went up all around the table.
“When is he leaving?”
“This evening, if you wish. There are a couple of VIP flights leaving Andrews tonight. Congressional flights.” It was the usual end-of-session junket season. Christmas in Europe, on fact-finding missions.
“General, do we have anything quicker?” the president asked Hilton.
“We can scratch up a VC-141. Lockheed JetStar, almost as fast as a -135, and we can have it up in half an hour.”
“Do it.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll call them in right now.” Hilton rose and walked to a phone in the corner.
“Judge, tell Greer to pack his bags. I’ll have a cover letter waiting for him on the plane to give to the prime minister. Admiral, you want the Invincible?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll get her for you. Next, what do we tell our people at sea?”
“If October just sails in, it won’t be necessary, but if we have to communicate with her—”
“Excuse me, Judge,” Ryan said, “that is rather likely—that we’ll have to. They’ll probably have these attack boats on the coast before she gets here. If so, we’ll have to warn her off if only to save the defecting officers. They are out to locate and sink her.”
“We haven’t detected her. What makes you think they can?” Foster asked, miffed at the suggestion.
“They did build her, Admiral. So they might know things about her that will enable them to locate her more easily than us.”
“Makes sense,” the president said. “That means somebody goes out to brief the fleet commanders. We can’t broadcast this, can we, Judge?”
“Mr. President, this source is too valuable to compromise in any way. That’s all I can say here, sir.”
“Very well, somebody flies out. Next thing is, we’ll have to talk to the Soviets about this. For the moment they can say that they’re operating in home waters. When will they pass Iceland?”
“Tomorrow night, unless they change course,” Foster answered.
“Okay, we give it a day, for them to call this off and for us to confirm this report. Judge, I want something to back up this fairy tale in twenty-four hours. If they haven’t turned back by midnight tomorrow, I’ll call Ambassador Arbatov into my office Friday morning.” He turned to the chiefs. “Gentlemen, I want to see contingency plans for dealing with this situation by tomorrow afternoon. We will meet here tomorrow at two. One more thing: no leaks! This information does not go beyond this room without my personal approval. If this story breaks to the press, I’ll have heads on my desk. Yes, General?”
“Mr. President, in order to develop those plans,” Hilton said after sitting back down, “we have to work through our field commanders and some of our own operations people. Certainly we’ll need Admiral Blackburn.” Blackburn was CINCLANT, commander in chief of the Atlantic.
“Let me think that one over. I’ll be back to you in an hour. How many people at the CIA know about this?”
“Four, sir. Ritter, Greer, Ryan, and myself, sir. That’s all.”
“Keep it that way.” The president had been bedeviled by security leaks for months.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Meeting is adjourned.”
The president stood. Moore walked around the table to keep him from leaving at once. Dr. Pelt stayed also as the rest filed out of the room. Ryan stood outside the door.
“That was all right.” General Maxwell grabbed his hand. He waited until everyone else was a few yards down the hall before going on. “I think you’re crazy, son, but you sure put a burr under Dan Foster’s saddle. No, even better: I think he got a hard-on.” The little general chuckled. “And if we get the sub, maybe we can change the president’s mind and arrange for the crew to disappear. The judge did that once, you know.” It was a thought that chilled Ryan as he watched Maxwell swagger down the hall.
“Jack, you want to come back in here a minute?” Moore’s voice called.
“You’re an historian, right?” the president asked, reviewing his notes. Ryan hadn’t even noticed him holding a pen.
“Yes, Mr. President. That’s what my graduate degree’s in.” Ryan shook his hand.
“You have a fine sense of the dramatic, Jack. You would have made a decent trial lawyer.” The president had made his reputation as a hard-driving state’s attorney. He had survived an unsuccessful Mafia assassination attempt early in his career which hadn’t hurt his political ambitions one bit. “Damned nice briefing.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Ryan beamed.
“The judge tells me you know the commander of that British task force.”
It was like a sandbag hitting his head. “Yes, sir. Admiral White. I’ve hunted with him, and our wives are good friends. They’re close to the Royal Family.”
“Good. Somebody has to fly out to brief our fleet commander, then go on to talk to the Brits, if we get their carrier, as I expect we will. The judge says we ought to let Admiral Davenport go out with you. So, you fly out to Kennedy tonight, then on to Invincible.”
“Mr. President, I—”
“Come now, Dr. Ryan,” Pelt smiled thinly. “You are uniquely suited to this. You already have access to the intelligence, you know the British commander, and you’re a naval intelligence specialist. You fit. Tell me, how eager do you think the navy is about getting this Red October?”
“Of course they’re interested in it, sir. To get a chance to look at it, better yet to run it, take it apart, and run it some more. It would be the intelligence coup of all time.”
“That’s true. But maybe they’re a little too eager.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, sir,” Ryan said, though he understood it just fine. Pelt was the president’s favorite. He was not the Pentagon’s favorite.
“They might take a chance that we might not want them to take.”
“Dr. Pelt, if you’re saying that a uniformed officer would—”
“He’s not saying that. At least not exactly. What he’s saying is that it might be useful for me to have somebody out there who can give me an independent, civilian point of view.”
“Sir, you don’t know me.”
“I’ve read a lot of your reports.” The chief executive was smiling. It was said he could turn dazzling charm on and off like a spotlight. Ryan was being blinded, knew it, and couldn’t do a thing about it. “I like your work. You have a good feel for things, for facts. Good judgment. Now, one reason I got to where I am is good judgment, too, and I think you can handle what I have in mind. The question is, will you do it, or won’t you?”
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“Do what, exactly, sir?”
“After you get out there, you stay put for a few days, and report directly to me. Not through channels, directly to me. You’ll get the cooperation you need. I’ll see to that.”
Ryan didn’t say anything. He’d just become a spy, a field officer, by presidential fiat. Worse, he’d be spying on his own side.
“You don’t like the idea of reporting on your own people, right? You won’t be, not really. Like I said, I want an independent, civilian opinion. We’d prefer to send an experienced case officer out, but we want to minimize the number of people involved in this. Sending Ritter or Greer out would be far too obvious, whereas you, on the other hand, are a relative—”
“Nobody?” Jack asked.
“As far as they’re concerned, yes,” Judge Moore replied. “The Soviets have a file on you. I’ve seen parts of it. They think you’re an upper-class drone, Jack.”
I am a drone, Ryan thought, unmoved by the implicit challenge. In this company I sure as hell am.
“Agreed, Mr. President. Please forgive me for hesitating. I’ve never been a field officer before.”
“I understand.” The president was magnanimous in victory. “One more thing. If I understand how submarines operate, Ramius could just have taken off, not saying anything. Why tip them off? Why the letter? The way I read this, it’s counterproductive.”
It was Ryan’s turn to smile. “Ever meet a sub driver, sir? No? How about an astronaut?”
“Sure, I’ve met a bunch of the Shuttle pilots.”
“They’re the same breed of cat, Mr. President. As to why he left the letter, there’s two parts to that. First, he’s probably mad about something, exactly what we’ll find out when we see him. Second, he figures he can pull this off regardless of what they try to stop him with—and he wants them to know that. Mr. President, the men who drive subs for a living are aggressive, confident, and very, very smart. They like nothing better than making somebody else, a surface ship operator for example, look like an idiot.”
“You just scored another point, Jack. The astronauts I’ve met, on most things they’re downright humble, but they think they’re gods when it comes to flying. I’ll keep that in mind. Jeff, let’s get back to work. Jack, keep me posted.”
Ryan shook his hand again. After the president and his senior adviser left, he turned to Judge Moore. “Judge, what the hell did you tell him about me?”
“Only the truth, Jack.” Actually, the judge had wanted this operation to be run by one of the CIA’s senior case officers. Ryan had not been part of this scheme, but presidents have been known to spoil many carefully laid plans. The judge took this philosophically. “This is a big move up in the world for you, if you do your job right. Hell, you might even like it.”
Ryan was sure he wouldn’t, and he was right.
CIA Headquarters
He didn’t speak the whole way back to Langley. The director’s car pulled into the basement parking garage, where they got out and entered a private elevator that took them directly to Moore’s office. The elevator door was disguised as a wall panel, which was convenient but melodramatic, Ryan thought. The DCI went right to his desk and lifted a phone.
“Bob, I need you in here right now.” He glanced at Ryan, standing in the middle of the room. “Looking forward to this, Jack?”
“Sure, Judge,” Ryan said without enthusiasm.
“I can see how you feel about this spying business, but the whole thing could develop into an extremely sensitive situation. You ought to be damned flattered you’re being trusted with it.”
Ryan caught the between-the-line message just as Ritter breezed in.
“What’s up, Judge?”
“We’re laying an operation on. Ryan is flying out to the Kennedy with Charlie Davenport to brief the fleet commanders on this October business. The president bought it.”
“Guess so. Greer left for Andrews just before you pulled in. Ryan gets to fly out, eh?”
“Yes. Jack, the rule is this: you can brief the fleet commander and Davenport, that’s all. Same for the Brits, just the boss-sailor. If Bob can confirm WILLOW, the data can be spread out, but only as much as is absolutely necessary. Clear?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose somebody has told the president that it’s hard to accomplish anything if nobody knows what the hell is going on. Especially the guys who’re doing the work.”
“I know what you’re saying, Jack. We have to change the president’s mind on that. We will, but until we do, remember—he is the boss. Bob, we’ll need to rustle something up so he’ll fit in.”
“Naval officer’s uniform? Let’s make him a commander, three stripes, usual ribbons.” Ritter looked Ryan over. “Say a forty-two long. We can have him outfitted in an hour, I expect. This operation have a name?”
“That’s next.” Moore lifted his phone again and tapped in five numbers. “I need two words…Uh-huh, thank you.” He wrote a few things down. “Okay, gentlemen, you’re calling this Operation MANDOLIN. You, Ryan, are Magi. Ought to be easy to remember, given the time of year. We’ll work up a series of code words based on those while you’re being fitted. Bob, take him down there yourself. I’ll call Davenport and have him arrange the flight.”
Ryan followed Ritter to the elevator. It was going too fast, everyone was being too clever, he thought. This Operation MANDOLIN was racing forward before they knew what the hell they were going to do, much less how. And the choice of his code name struck Ryan as singularly inappropriate. He wasn’t anyone’s wise man. The name should have been something more like “Halloween.”
THE SEVENTH DAY
THURSDAY, 9 DECEMBER
The North Atlantic
When Samuel Johnson compared sailing in a ship to “being in jail, with the chance of being drowned,” at least he had the consolation of travelling to his ship in a safe carriage, Ryan thought. Now he was going to sea, and before he got to his ship Ryan stood the chance of being smashed to red pulp in a plane crash. Jack sat hunched in a bucket seat on the port side of a Grumman Greyhound, known to the fleet without affection as a COD (for carrier onboard delivery), a flying delivery truck. The seats, facing aft, were too close together, and his knees jutted up against his chin. The cabin was far more amenable to cargo than to people. There were three tons of engine and electronics parts stowed in crates aft—there, no doubt, so that the impact of a plane crash on the valuable equipment would be softened by the four bodies in the passenger section. The cabin was not heated. There were no windows. A thin aluminum skin separated him from a two-hundred-knot wind that shrieked in time with the twin turbine engines. Worst of all, they were flying through a storm at five thousand feet, and the COD was jerking up and down in hundred-foot gulps like a berserk roller coaster. The only good thing was the lack of lighting, Ryan thought—at least nobody can see how green my face is. Right behind him were two pilots, talking away loudly so they could be heard over the engine noise. The bastards were enjoying themselves!
The noise lessened somewhat, or so it seemed. It was hard to tell. He’d been issued foam-rubber ear protectors along with a yellow, inflatable life preserver and a lecture on what to do in the event of a crash. The lecture had been perfunctory enough that it took no great intellect to estimate their chances of survival if they did crash on a night like this. Ryan hated flying. He had once been a marine second lieutenant, and his active career had ended after only three months when his platoon’s helicopter had crashed on Crete during a NATO exercise. He had injured his back, nearly been crippled for life, and ever since regarded flying as something to be avoided. The COD, he thought, was bouncing more down than up. It probably meant they were close to the Kennedy. The alternative did not bear thinking about. They were only ninety minutes out of Oceana Naval Air Station at Virginia Beach. It felt like a month, and Ryan swore to himself that he’d never be afraid on a civilian airliner again.
The nose dropped about twenty degrees, and the aircraft seemed to be flying rig
ht at something. They were landing, the most dangerous part of carrier flight operations. He remembered a study conducted during the Vietnam War in which carrier pilots had been fitted with portable electrocardiographs to monitor stress, and it had surprised a lot of people that the most stressful time for carrier pilots wasn’t while they were being shot at—it was while they were landing, particularly at night.
Christ, you’re full of happy thoughts! Ryan told himself. He closed his eyes. One way or another, it would be over in a few seconds.
The deck was slick with rain and heaving up and down, a black hole surrounded by perimeter lights. The carrier landing was a controlled crash. Massive landing gear struts and shock absorbers were needed to lessen the bone-crushing impact. The aircraft surged forward only to be jerked to a halt by the arresting wire. They were down. They were safe. Probably. After a moment’s pause, the COD began moving forward again. Ryan heard some odd noises as the plane taxied and realized that they came from the wings folding up. The one danger he had not considered was flying on an aircraft whose wings were supposed to collapse. It was, he decided, just as well. The plane finally stopped moving, and the rear hatch opened.
Ryan flipped off his seatbelts and stood rapidly, banging his head on the low ceiling. He didn’t wait for Davenport. With his canvas bag clutched to his chest he darted out of the rear of the aircraft. He looked around, and was pointed to the Kennedy’s island structure by a yellow-shirted deck crewman. The rain was falling heavily, and he felt rather than saw that the carrier was indeed moving on the fifteen-foot seas. He ran towards an open, lighted hatch fifty feet away. He had to wait for Davenport to catch up. The admiral didn’t run. He walked with a precise thirty-inch step, dignified as a flag officer should be, and Ryan decided that he was probably annoyed that his semisecret arrival prohibited the usual ceremony of bosun’s pipes and side boys. There was a marine standing inside the hatch, a corporal, resplendent in striped blue trousers, khaki shirt and tie, and snow-white pistol belt. He saluted, welcoming both aboard.