The Hunt for Red October

by Tom Clancy

  “No, they won’t go that far. We also have that agreement about keeping our missile subs five hundred miles offshore. Arbatov probably has his instructions on what to tell us already, but he’ll play for all the time he can. It’s also vaguely possible that he’s in the dark. We know how they compartmentalize information. You suppose we’re reading too much into this talent for obfuscation?”

  “I think not, sir. It is a principle of diplomacy,” Pelt observed, “that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.”

  The president smiled. “Well, they’ve had enough time to play this game. I hope my belated reaction will not disappoint them.”

  “No, sir. Alex must have half expected you to kick him out the door.”

  “The thought’s occurred to me more than once. His diplomatic charm has always been lost on me. That’s the one thing about the Russians—they remind me so much of the mafia chieftains I used to prosecute. The same smattering of culture and good manners, and the same absence of morality.” The president shook his head. He was talking like a hawk again. “Stay close, Jeff. I have George Farmer coming in here in a few minutes, but I want you around when our friend comes back.”

  Pelt walked back to his office pondering the president’s remark. It was, he admitted to himself, crudely accurate. The most wounding insult to an educated Russian was to be called nekulturny, uncultured—the term didn’t translate adequately—yet the same men who sat in the gilt boxes at the Moscow State Opera weeping at the end of a performance of Boris Gudunov could immediately turn around and order the execution or imprisonment of a hundred men without blinking. A strange people, made more strange by their political philosophy. But the president had too many sharp edges, and Pelt wished he’d learn to soften them. A speech in front of the American Legion was one thing, a discussion with the ambassador of a foreign power was something else.

  CIA Headquarters

  “CARDINAL’s in trouble, Judge.” Ritter sat down.

  “No surprise there.” Moore removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Something Ryan had not seen was the cover note from the station chief in Moscow saying that to get his latest signal out, CARDINAL had bypassed half the courier chain that ran from the Kremlin to the U.S. embassy. The agent was getting bold in his old age. “What does the station chief say exactly?”

  “CARDINAL’s supposed to be in the hospital with pneumonia. Maybe it’s true, but…”

  “He’s getting old, and it is winter over there, but who believes in coincidences?” Moore looked down at his desk. “What do you suppose they’d do if they’ve turned him?”

  “He’d die quietly. Depends on who turned him. If it was the KGB, they might want to make something out of it, especially since our friend Andropov took a lot of their prestige with him when he left. But I don’t think so. Given who his sponsor is, it would raise too much of a ruckus. Same thing if the GRU turns him. No, they’d grill him for a few weeks, then quietly do away with him. A public trial would be too counterproductive.”

  Judge Moore frowned. They sounded like doctors discussing a terminally ill patient. He didn’t even know what CARDINAL looked like. There was a photograph somewhere in the file, but he had never seen it. It was easier that way. As an appellate court judge he had never had to look a defendant in the eye; he’d just reviewed the law in a detached way. He tried to keep his stewardship of the CIA the same way. Moore knew that this might be perceived as cowardly, and was very different from what people expect of a DCI—but even spies got old, and old men developed consciences and doubts that rarely troubled the young. It was time to leave the “Company.” Nearly three years, it was enough. He’d accomplished what he was supposed to do.

  “Tell the station chief to lay off. No inquiries of any kind directed at CARDINAL. If he’s really sick, we’ll be hearing from him again. If not, we’ll know that soon enough, too.”

  “Right.”

  Ritter had succeeded in confirming CARDINAL’s reports. One agent had reported that the fleet was sailing with additional political officers, another that the surface force was commanded by an academic sailor and crony of Gorshkov, who had flown to Severomorsk and boarded the Kirov minutes before the fleet had sailed. The naval architect who was believed to have designed the Red October was supposed to have gone with him. A British agent had reported that detonators for the various weapons carried by the surface ships had been hastily taken aboard from their usual storage depots ashore. Finally, there was an unconfirmed report that Admiral Korov, commander of the Northern Fleet, was not at his command post; his whereabouts were unknown. Together the information was enough to confirm the WILLOW report, and more was still coming in.

  The U.S. Naval Academy

  “Skip?”

  “Oh, howdy, Admiral. Will you join me?” Tyler waved to a vacant chair across the table.

  “I got a message from the Pentagon for you.” The superintendent of the Naval Academy, a former submarine officer, sat down. “You have an appointment tonight at 1930 hours. That’s all they said.”

  “Great!” Tyler was just finishing his lunch. He’d been working on the simulation program nearly around the clock since Monday. The appointment meant that he would have access to the air force’s Cray-2 tonight. His program was just about ready.

  “What’s this all about anyway?”

  “Sorry, sir, I can’t say. You know how it is.”

  The White House

  The Soviet ambassador was back at four in the afternoon. To avoid press notice he had been taken into the Treasury building across the street from the White House and brought through a connecting tunnel which few knew existed. The president hoped that he had found this unsettling. Pelt hustled in to be there when Arbatov arrived.

  “Mr. President,” Arbatov reported, standing at attention. The president had not known that he had any military experience. “I am instructed to convey to you the regrets of my government that there has not been time to inform you of this. One of our nuclear submarines is missing and presumed lost. We are conducting an emergency rescue operation.”

  The president nodded soberly, motioning the ambassador to a chair. Pelt sat next to him.

  “This is somewhat embarrassing, Mr. President. You see, in our navy as in yours, duty on a nuclear submarine is a posting of the greatest importance, and consequently those selected for it are among our best educated and trusted men. In this particular case several members of the crew—the officers, that is—are sons of high Party officials. One is even the son of a Central Committee member—I cannot say which, of course. The Soviet Navy’s great effort to find her sons is understandable, though I admit a bit undisciplined.” Arbatov feigned embarrassment beautifully, speaking as though he were confiding a great family secret. “Therefore, this has developed into what your people call an ‘all hands’ operation. As you undoubtedly know, it was undertaken virtually overnight.”

  “I see,” the president said sympathetically. “That makes me feel a little better, Alex. Jeff, I think it’s late enough in the day. How about you fix us all a drink. Bourbon, Alex?”

  “Yes, thank you, sir.”

  Pelt walked over to a rosewood cabinet against the wall. The ornate antique contained a small bar, complete with an ice bucket which was stocked every afternoon. The president often liked to have a drink or two before dinner, something else that reminded Arbatov of his countrymen. Dr. Pelt had had ample experience playing presidential bartender. In a few minutes he came back with three glasses in his hands.

  “To tell you the truth, we rather suspected this was a rescue operation,” Pelt said.

  “I don’t know how we get our young men to do this sort of work.” The president sipped at his drink. Arbatov worked hard on his. He had said frequently at local cocktail parties that he preferred American bourbon to his native vodka. Maybe it was true. “We’ve lost a pair of nuclear boats, I believe. How many does this make for you, three, four?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. President. I expec
t your information on this is better than my own.” The president noted that he had just told the truth for the first time today. “Certainly I can agree with you that such duty is both dangerous and demanding.”

  “How many men aboard, Alex?” the president asked.

  “I have no idea. A hundred more or less, I suppose. I’ve never been aboard a naval vessel.”

  “Mostly kids, probably, just like our crews. It is indeed a sad commentary on both our countries that our mutual suspicions must condemn so many of our best young men to such hazards, when we know that some won’t be coming back. But—how can it be otherwise?” The president paused, turning to look out the windows. The snow was melting on the South Lawn. It was time for his next line.

  “Perhaps we can help,” the president offered speculatively. “Yes, perhaps we can use this tragedy as an opportunity to reduce those suspicions by some small amount. Perhaps we can make something good come from this to demonstrate that our relations really have improved.”

  Pelt turned away, fumbling for his pipe. In their many years of friendship he could never understand how the president got away with so much. Pelt had met him at Washington University, when he was majoring in political science, the president in prelaw. Back then the chief executive had been president of the dramatics society. Certainly amateur theatrics had helped his legal career. It was said that at least one Mafia don had been sent up the river by sheer rhetoric. The president referred to it as his sincere act.

  “Mr. Ambassador, I offer you the assistance and the resources of the United States in the search for your missing countrymen.”

  “That is most kind of you, Mr. President, but—”

  The president held his hand up. “No buts, Alex. If we cannot cooperate in something like this, how can we hope to cooperate in more serious matters? If memory serves, last year when one of our navy patrol aircraft crashed off the Aleutians, one of your fishing vessels”—it had been an intelligence trawler—“picked up the crew, saved their lives. Alex, we owe you a debt for that, a debt of honor, and the United States will not be said to be ungrateful.” He paused for effect. “They’re probably all dead, you know. I don’t suppose there’s more chance of surviving a sub accident than of surviving a plane crash. But at least the crew’s families will know. Jeff, don’t we have some specialized submarine rescue equipment?”

  “With all the money we give the navy? We damned well ought to. I’ll call Foster about it.”

  “Good,” the president said. “Alex, it is too much to expect that your mutual suspicions will be allayed by something so small as this. Your history and ours conspire against us. But let’s make a small beginning with this. If we can shake hands in space or over a conference table in Vienna, maybe we can do it here also. I will give the necessary instructions to my commanders as soon as we’re finished here.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.” Arbatov concealed his uneasiness.

  “And please convey my respects to Chairman Narmonov and my sympathy for the families of your missing men. I appreciate his effort, and yours, in getting this information to us.”

  “Yes. Mr. President.” Arbatov rose. He left after shaking hands. What were the Americans really up to? He’d warned Moscow: call it a rescue mission and they’d demand to help. It was their stupid Christmas season, and Americans were addicted to happy endings. It was madness not to call it something else—to hell with the protocol.

  At the same time he was forced to admire the American president. A strange man, very open, yet full of guile. A friendly man most of the time, yet always ready to seize the advantage. He remembered stories his grandmother had told, about how the gypsies switched babies. The American president was very Russian.

  “Well,” the president said after the doors closed, “now we can keep a nice close eye on them, and they can’t complain. They’re lying and we know it—but they don’t know we know. And we’re lying, and they certainly suspect it, but not why we’re lying. Gawd! and I told him this morning that not knowing was dangerous! Jeff, I’ve been thinking about this. I do not like the fact that so much of their navy is operating off our coast. Ryan was right, the Atlantic is our ocean. I want the air force and the navy to cover them like a goddamned blanket! That’s our ocean, and I damned well want them to know it.” The president finished off his drink. “On the question of the sub, I want our people to have a good look at it, and whoever of the crew wants to defect, we take care of. Quietly, of course.”

  “Of course. As a practical matter, having the officers is as great a coup as having the submarine.”

  “But the navy still wants to keep it.”

  “I just don’t see how we can do that, not without eliminating the crewmen, and we can’t do that.”

  “Agreed.” The president buzzed his secretary. “Get me General Hilton.”

  The Pentagon

  The air force’s computer center was in a subbasement of the Pentagon. The room temperature was well below seventy degrees. It was enough to make Tyler’s leg ache where it met the metal-plastic prothesis. He was used to that.

  Tyler was sitting at a control console. He had just finished a trial run of his program, named MORAY after the vicious eel that inhabited oceanic reefs. Skip Tyler was proud of his programming ability. He’d taken the old dinosaur program from the files of the Taylor Lab, adapted it to the common Defense Department computer language, ADA—named for Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron—and then tightened it up. For most people this would have been a month’s work. He’d done it in four days, working almost around the clock not only because the money was an attractive incentive but also because the project was a professional challenge. He ended the job quietly satisfied that he could still meet an impossible deadline with time to spare. It was eight in the evening. MORAY had just run through a one-variable-value test and not crashed. He was ready.

  He’d never seen the Cray-2 before, except in photographs, and he was pleased to have a chance to use it. The -2 was five units of raw electrical power, each one roughly pentagonal in shape, about six feet high and four across. The largest unit was the main-frame processor bank; the other four were memory banks, arrayed around it in a cruciform configuration. Tyler typed in the command to load his variable sets. For each of the Red October’s main dimensions—length, beam, height—he input ten discrete numerical values. Then came six subtly different values for her hull form block and prismatic coefficients. There were five sets of tunnel dimensions. This aggregated to over thirty thousand possible permutations. Next he keyed in eighteen power variables to cover the range of possible engine systems. The Cray-2 absorbed this information and placed each number in its proper slot. It was ready to run.

  “Okay,” he announced to the system operator, an air force master sergeant.

  “Roge.” The sergeant typed “XQT” into his terminal. The Cray-2 went to work.

  Tyler walked over to the sergeant’s console.

  “That’s a right lengthy program you’ve input, sir.” The sergeant laid a ten-dollar bill on the top of the console. “Betcha my baby can run it in ten minutes.”

  “Not a chance.” Tyler laid his own bill next to the sergeant’s. “Fifteen minutes, easy.”

  “Split the difference?”

  “Alright. Where’s the head around here?”

  “Out the door, sir, turn right, go down the hall and it’s on the left.”

  Tyler moved towards the door. It annoyed him that he could not walk gracefully, but after four years the inconvenience was a minor one. He was alive—that’s what counted. The accident had occurred on a cold, clear night in Groton, Connecticut, only a block from the shipyard’s main gate. On Friday at three in the morning he was driving home after a twenty-hour day getting his new command ready for sea. The civilian yard worker had had a long day also, stopping off at a favorite watering hole for a few too many, as the police established afterwards. He got into his car, started it, and ran a red light, ramming Tyler’s Pontiac broadside at fifty m
iles per hour. For him the accident was fatal. Skip was luckier. It was at an intersection, and he had the green light; when he saw the front end of the Ford not a foot from his left-side door, it was far too late. He did not remember going through a pawnshop window, and the next week, when he hovered near death at the Yale-New Haven hospital, was a complete blank. His most vivid memory was of waking up, eight days later he was to learn, to see his wife, Jean, holding his hand. His marriage up to that point had been a troubled one, not an uncommon problem for nuclear submarine officers. His first sight of her was not a complimentary one—her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was tousled—but she had never looked quite so good. He had never appreciated just how important she was. A lot more important than half a leg.

  “Skip? Skip Tyler!”

  The former submariner turned awkwardly to see a naval officer running towards him.

  “Johnnie Coleman! How the hell are you!”

  It was Captain Coleman now, Tyler noted. They had served together twice, a year on the Tecumseh, another on the Shark. Coleman, a weapons expert, had commanded a pair of nuclear subs.

  “How’s the family, Skip?”

  “Jean’s fine. Five kids now, and another on the way.”

  “Damn!” they shook hands with enthusiasm. “You always were a randy bugger. I hear you’re teaching at Annapolis.”

  “Yeah, and a little engineering stuff on the side.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m running a program on the air force computer. Checking a new ship configuration for Sea Systems Command.” It was an accurate enough cover story. “What do they have you doing?”