Understrike

by James Barrington

  Captain Vadim Pankin, used to things actually working when and in the way they were supposed to, was less than impressed, and the moment the exercise had been completed, he summoned the leading participants to the bridge, ostensibly for a debrief, but in reality because he had decided to make a number of changes to the way the system worked.

  ‘I’m not happy with the way we are doing this,’ he said, when all of the responsible officers had assembled on the bridge and were standing in front of him. ‘It is far too labour intensive. We are using a lot of men, who are having to climb up onto the containers using ladders and manually remove the locking pins, before swinging the upper container into position. When we perform the operation for real, in my opinion there is far too much chance of something going wrong, of a pin jamming or a man falling off a ladder if the sea is rough, or something of that sort. I am aware that the system was designed to be as simple and foolproof as possible, but I now believe that that is probably not the correct approach. Men make mistakes, especially when they are under pressure, and we do not know what the situation will be like when we reach the weapon deployment point.’

  He looked around, but none of the other officers commented. Not that he had expected them to. He was the captain, and when he spoke he expected people to listen, not to talk.

  ‘What I do not want,’ Pankin continued, ‘is for us to attract unwelcome attention from anybody whilst preparing the weapon for release, and having half a dozen men clambering over the containers using ladders is exactly the kind of thing that would make people look at the ship and start to wonder, especially in view of what would happen a short time afterwards. This is supposed to be a covert operation, and in my opinion the best way for it to stay covert is to have nobody on deck at all during the pre-deployment phase, so that the only thing that moves will be the launch container itself. In short, I want to automate the whole operation. Can that be done?’

  Mikhail Ostenko, the chief engineering officer, a bulky, dark-haired man with permanently grubby hands and who normally exuded a slight aroma of lubricating oil, and to whom the last four words had clearly been addressed, nodded slowly and thought fast, taking a mental inventory of the equipment and workshop facilities that he had on board and which could be used to do what the captain wanted.

  ‘I will have to check exactly what equipment we have, sir,’ he replied, ‘but I think we can jury rig something that will work. I can probably position a hydraulic ram on each end of the launch container and link it to the hydraulic system that’s already there for the supporting legs. The rams could do two things. They could hold the container in its normal position without the need for locking bolts, and then rotate it into the firing position on command. I could do something similar with the front container doors so that they would both open simultaneously when we are ready to launch, and the rear doors would not need to be opened at all. We only do that now to allow men to go inside the container to remove and then reposition the locking pins.’

  ‘Come back to me when you know that you can do the job, and exactly how you would accomplish it,’ the captain said, sounding pleased.

  One of the other officers looked unhappy at the change of plan.

  ‘Yes, Yuri? What is it?’

  Yuri Abramski was the man in charge of the electronics, navigation equipment and the like on the weapon.

  ‘There are several safety interlocks on the device, sir,’ he said. ‘They have to be removed before launch, and that cannot be done if the process is automated.’

  Captain Pankin stared at him.

  ‘What is the purpose of those interlocks?’ he asked.

  ‘To prevent inadvertent launch of the device, to permit the warhead to be armed and so on.’

  ‘And they are removed how?’

  ‘Under the supervision of an officer, one of our men physically pulls out each pin. It’s much like the pre-flight check on a fighter aircraft.’

  ‘Can the launch, the actual deployment of the weapon, be carried out with the interlocks in place?’

  Abramski nodded.

  ‘Yes, but the—’

  ‘So if the interlock pins were removed as a part of the launch sequence,’ Pankin interrupted him, ‘after the weapon began moving? Would that work?’

  ‘Well,’ Abramski began slowly, that option not having occurred to him. ‘I suppose that is a possibility.’

  ‘Good. Mikhail, can you also rig up some cables or something within the container so that as the weapon starts to move all the interlock pins are extracted?’

  ‘That should not be a problem.’

  ‘Work with Yuri on that part of the modifications,’ Pankin said. ‘And do a dry run to make sure it works. When everything is ready, physically push the weapon forward inside the container far enough to make sure that every pin is extracted cleanly. If that can’t be done, we may have to rethink this.’

  ‘I should emphasize, sir,’ Ostenko said, ‘that it will take a few days to locate and prepare what I will need, and then to fit it and test it. I will have to request a slight reduction in speed to allow time for this work to be completed, and this will obviously impact our arrival time at the launch site.’

  ‘For the first time ever in my entire career in the navy of our nation,’ Captain Pankin replied, with a slight smile on his face, ‘I find myself in charge of an operation that is not time-critical, running to a timetable or facing an immovable deadline. Slowing down the ship will have no effect whatsoever upon the success of our mission. In fact,’ he added, turning to the navigating officer, ‘we can start right now. Reduce speed by three knots. That will reduce the distance we cover in every twenty-four-hour period by over seventy nautical miles, and add about seven hours to our arrival time. Will that be enough, or do we need a further speed reduction?’

  ‘That should be entirely adequate, sir,’ the chief engineer replied, and a couple minutes later saluted before leaving the bridge to head for the engine room and the mechanical stores locker to see exactly what he had to work with.

  * * *

  The Atlantic Ocean has something of a reputation for bad storms with some parts of it, like the Bay of Biscay, being particularly notorious, but once the ship had moved some distance south of the Faroes-Iceland Gap, the atmospheric pressure began to rise and brought with it largely calm seas, light winds and mainly blue skies. Unless something changed dramatically in the next 72 hours, as far as the navigator could see they should have a straight and clear run right down to the target area, and would reach the launch point pretty much on the revised schedule that the captain had just implemented.

  In fact, they might get there a little earlier, or even a little later than planned, depending on how quickly the modifications to the weapon deployment system could be made. Although the ship was at that moment proceeding much more slowly than normal, if the work could be accomplished in a shorter time than expected, then it was almost possible that they could speed up again and make the original, albeit unofficial, deadline. Not that the change in arrival time would make any difference at all to the result of the operation.

  The Russian government, like the governments of every other nation on Earth, would learn about the events following the weapon’s deployment from the news media and surveillance satellites, and would react accordingly. It would come as a major surprise to everybody, including Moscow, and that was exactly what the planners had intended.

  Chapter 28

  Saturday

  RV Thomas G Thompson, at sea

  That Friday afternoon and evening had seemed never-ending. Together, and in English, Richter and Steve Barber had taken Pavlov through the entire story half a dozen times, both men making copious notes as they did so. They weren’t trying to catch out the Russian in a lie or half-truth. Quite the reverse, in fact. They were listening closely to what he told them, and then asking the same questions, just expressed in slightly different terms, multiple times to clarify his story, and noting the answers that he gave, just in case he sudde
nly remembered something additional or new or different. Or even wrong.

  This is a basic interrogation technique that can be used against either a friendly or a hostile subject. Repetition almost invariably leads to reinforcement or rejection: either the successive questions elicit more coherent and logical information – reinforcement – as the person being questioned relives the events in their memory, or the witness starts to fall apart, forgetting what lies he or she told previously, and producing contradictory information, hence rejection.

  This really wasn’t Richter’s strong suit, but Barber seemed to have a real talent for it – either that or lots of experience – which would make sense as he’d been part of a team sent out to pick up a defector.

  Then, when they both really thought that Pavlov had nothing left to give, Richter had sent him to bed in the quarters he had been given, and then he’d spent a further two hours going over the material with Barber. At the end of the evening, they were both convinced beyond the slightest doubt that some Russian offensive plan, in short an attack of some sort, was coming to fruition – perhaps as early as the following Tuesday or Wednesday, if the information Viktor Bykov had supplied was accurate – but they still had no idea about the target, the type of weapon or the delivery system, all crucial, and all missing, pieces of information. In some respects, the short and cryptic note sent by Viktor Bykov was the most detailed information they had, though it was still not clear if Cumbre Vieja on La Palma was intended to be the target, and if so how and why, or the location from which the unspecified weapon would be launched, presumably towards America.

  While Barber had used the ship’s communication facilities to send an encrypted text to Langley summarizing what they had discovered so far, and including the contents of Pavlov’s memory stick as attachments so that Russian analysts there could begin translating the recorded conversations, Richter had borrowed a small laptop and a pair of headphones from one of the scientists on board – it was a research vessel after all, and there were computers everywhere – and had gone to his own quarters to play the audio files and listen for himself. After the third time that his own snoring had woken him up, he had given up for the night.

  The following morning he got up just after 6.30, helped himself to an early breakfast in the mess, then went back to his cabin and started all over again.

  The problem with trying to work out what was going on was really twofold. Based upon Pavlov’s description of the library, Richter knew that it was a longish oblong room in which was a longish oblong table, and the open-faced bookcase where the recording device had been positioned was at one end of the room. That meant some of the voices, from those members of the group sitting closest to the bookcase, were much louder and clearer than those of the people sitting at the opposite end of the table. And, like most meetings involving a biggish group, at times several people were talking at the same moment, which meant listening to any one voice was either difficult or simply impossible.

  That was one problem. The other one was that the participants were obviously talking about something with which they were all very familiar, and so the discussions tended to be highly specific, just relating to one part of the project or to an individual aspect where the speaker had particular expertise. After listening to the entire collection of recordings once – which took him most of the morning – Richter was still not much further forward in understanding the project than he had been after talking to Pavlov the previous night.

  What did seem clear was that when the Russian had been assigned to the dacha as a guard, much of the work on the project had already been completed, and the discussions were very detailed, many of them concentrating, for some reason, on the targeting coordinates. The men discussing this sounded to Richter more like civilian scientists than senior military officers. He knew that was a subjective impression, but in his experience people in the military tended to be somewhat clipped and focused in their speech, and the people he was listening to weren’t. They also sounded more like geologists than anything else, throwing technical terms into their sentences, terms that Richter had never encountered in English, never mind in Russian, and which the speakers then had to clarify for the benefit of the other members of the group, because clearly they hadn’t known what the terms meant either.

  What he had been hoping for was a kind of general statement of intent from somebody in the room that would address the overall aim of the project, but he never heard anything like that. But there were some phrases and expressions that seemed to be uttered by the people around the table fairly frequently. Unfortunately, few of these made much immediate sense either. One was a proper name that Richter had already heard of, but which he checked on the Internet. The answer he found made no sense, but he made a note of it anyway.

  There were repeated references to an oceanic system, but without clarification that could mean anything from the Gulf Stream upwards, and most disturbing of all he’d heard a handful of analyses that discussed what he translated as ‘megaton equivalences’, which he assumed meant pretty much the same as the more common expression ‘megaton TNT equivalent.’ This referred to the yield of a nuclear weapon when measured in terms of an equivalent explosion using TNT. These numbers were always in the hundreds, sometimes over 500, by any standards an alarming number, especially bearing in mind that back in 1964 the then American Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had calculated that the explosion of 400 ‘equivalent megatons’ or EMTs would be sufficient to ensure mutual assured destruction – in other words, that explosive power would be enough to completely destroy the Soviet Union. Or America.

  The other expression that Richter had never heard before, and which meant absolutely nothing to him, was ‘megaton multiplier.’ He could only assume that this meant the Russians had devised some way of greatly increasing the explosive yield of a nuclear weapon. And that worried him as well.

  Working on the assumption that a cup of coffee might help jog his brain cells into something approaching normality, Richter picked up his notes and headed for the door of his cabin. But before he got there his mobile rang and the screen display identified the caller as Richard Simpson. Which was not entirely surprising.

  ‘Any progress?’ he asked from Hammersmith, without preamble, his voice clear and loud over the satellite link.

  ‘Not a great deal, if I’m honest,’ Richter replied. ‘It’s pretty bloody frustrating, because I’m only seeing a part of the whole thing. It’s a bit like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle in the dark, when you can feel the shape of the individual pieces but not see what’s printed on them, so you can’t put it together.’

  ‘Very poetic, Richter, if that’s the right word. Now listen to me. You’re on a conference call at this end, with me and the Intelligence Director, and we also have telephone links to Cheltenham, Millbank and Vauxhall Cross.’ That meant people from GCHQ, MI5 and the SIS, the entire intelligence apparatus of the United Kingdom, were also on the line. ‘We’d like to know what you’ve got out of our colleague from the East, if anything, but this is still an open line, so bear that in mind.’

  ‘I bet now you’re regretting sending me up here without one of our modified mobiles and laptops, aren’t you?’

  ‘Just get on with it, Richter,’ Simpson snapped.

  ‘Right. You got the recordings I sent you yesterday evening?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. We sent copies out to all three of our associate organizations so they could translate them and try and come to some conclusions about what’s going on.’

  ‘I think the expression interesting but not helpful more or less covers it,’ a new and clearly cultured voice responded.

  ‘Thank you, Cheltenham,’ Simpson said. ‘I presume you listened to them as well, Richter? Your Russian is pretty good, as I recall.’

  ‘I did, and my take on them is pretty much the same as that bloke who just interrupted, but a hell of a lot less polite. Mine is more like "I have no fucking idea what’s going on." Is that clear enough for you?�
��

  ‘Crystal, Richter, but just mind your language. I don’t want my colleagues thinking that you’re some kind of ignorant oik.’

  ‘I don’t know why not. That is pretty much what you think of me. Anyway,’ he went on before Simpson could respond, ‘as you’ve all no doubt discovered, the sound quality on the recordings is somewhat variable, largely because of the circumstances under which they were obtained.’

  He explained what Pavlov had told him about the layout of the room in the dacha and the location of the recording device.

  ‘According to the defector, the digital recorder was very high spec, but the sound of people speaking in a normal voice at the far end of the table could easily be drowned out by a conversation going on closer to the microphone, or even by people coughing or moving their chairs. And the other obvious problem is that we’re not dealing with a planning meeting or anything like that. When these people met, they were always discussing specifics, so what we’re hearing are detailed discussions about very small parts of the overall plan, but without having any idea what the overall plan actually is, because none of them ever mention it.’

  ‘And has your tame Russian managed to shed any light on what’s happening?’

  ‘He did hear snippets of conversation between the participants when they were arriving and departing, and before the meetings started. One of the jobs he was required to do was to sort out drinks and refreshments for those involved. These were provided on a kind of self-service basis in an anteroom adjacent to the library where the meetings took place, and he made it his business to walk in there frequently from the kitchen with fresh supplies of tea or coffee or snacks, and obviously he kept his ears open whenever he did so.

  ‘As we all know, some people are effectively invisible, people like waiters, barmen, chambermaids and cleaners. Because you expect to see a bartender behind a bar, or a waiter in a restaurant, they essentially become just a part of the furniture. A uniformed GRU guard walking into a room where a lot of really senior GRU and SVR and other Russian big wheels are gathering and getting ready for a meeting, and carrying a fresh pot of coffee or plate of cakes or whatever, would be exactly what the people in the room would expect to see, and what they probably wouldn’t do is stop talking. He also had to go through additional security screening before he was appointed to the job, and that would just tend to reinforce the idea that he was nothing more than a trusted servant.’