Beyond lay another corridor lined with offices; then a corner, and the door to the operations room. The Captain 2nd Rank tapped his personal security code into a keypad, then opened the door for the Admiral to enter.
Two dozen uniformed men and women saluted. Astashenkov acknowledged them with a nod. He strode to the podium in the centre of the room. Admiral Belikov’s staff officer hovered in wait.
‘Good day, Comrade Vice-Admiral,’ the young man bowed. ‘The Commander-in-Chief is detained. An important telephone call from Admiral Grekov. He can’t attend this briefing. He asks that you report to him in his office afterwards.’
Astashenkov nodded curtly, disguising his unease. Belikov talking on the phone to the Admiral of the Fleet? It must be urgent. Normally Grekov preferred to write.
Had they got wind of his meeting with Savkin?
He sat at the small desk. Another nod. The briefing could begin.
The wall was covered with a map of the northern hemisphere, the Pole at its centre. The Captain Lieutenant briefing officer was young, blond and enthusiastic. Astashenkov remembered himself being like that many years ago.
‘This was the situation at 06.00 today,’ the youth began, using a torch to project an arrow onto the map. ‘Podvodnaya Lodka Atomnaya Raketnaya Ballisticheskaya. We have eight PLARBs on patrol.’
These were nuclear-powered, ballistic-missile boats, their rockets targeted on the major cities in the United States. The newer ones were Taifun class, at twenty-five thousand tons the biggest submarines ever built. Each boat carried twenty missiles with a range of four thousand eight hundred miles, seven warheads per missile. Each boat could destroy one hundred and forty American towns or military bases.
This was the main reason for the Northern Fleet’s existence; to keep operational forty submarines, carrying six hundred missiles with two thousand warheads.
So, eight were at sea. Not bad, Feliks thought, considering the maintenance they needed and the amount of shore leave for the crew.
‘Four in the Barents Sea, four under the Arctic ice.’
The torch pointed to eight rings on the map. No precise positions, just the areas where the boats would patrol slowly, waiting for the orders they hoped would never come.
‘Podvodnaya Lodka Atomnaya,’ the briefing officer went on. PLAs were the nuclear-powered attack boats. ‘Fifteen operational.’
Out of fifty? Not so good, thought Feliks.
‘Three are in the Mediterranean, and two are currently returning from there. One is to the west of Scotland gathering intelligence on the British Navy, and one returning. Two more are on long-distance Atlantic patrol off the United States coast, and two transitting home. One of those is shadowing the US aircraft carrier Eisenhower. That leaves four on the barrier between North Cape and Greenland.’
‘Four PLAs to try to stop the NATO SSNs from tracking our missile boats? It’s not enough!’ exploded Astashenkov in exasperation.
They all knew it wasn’t enough; they also knew that the American Los Angeles class submarines and the British Trafalgars were so damned quiet, it would be difficult to detect them, however many PLAs they had on patrol.
‘Permission to continue, Comrade Vice-Admiral?’
Feliks raised a hand.
‘The surface fleet. In defensive positions facing the west, the Kiev and the Moskva are co-ordinating antisubmarine tactics, with five escorts.’
‘What about the two Sovremenys in the harbour?’
‘Due to sail tomorrow morning. Taking on final stores.’
The Captain Lieutenant rattled off a list of ships deployed further afield, then handed over to the intelligence briefer. Astashenkov concentrated his attention.
‘The tactics in NATO’s Exercise Ocean Guardian are as predicted – what we’d expect them to be in the prelude to war.’
The boy had learned the jargon well, Astashenkov mused.
‘The US carrier battle-groups have yet to threaten the Rodina. One is in mid-Atlantic, the other closer to the motherland, but still near Iceland. It’s the British who are nearest our shores. Our radar satellite is tracking the Illustrious group in the Norwegian sea. And we have reports locating one or two of their submarines in the past twenty-four hours.’
Astashenkov’s eyebrows arched in anticipation.
‘The first came from a Vishnya intelligence vessel, north of Scotland. It heard a British helicopter trying to radio a submarine. There was no response and in desperation the pilot broke the code. He called “in clear” to HMS Truculent.
‘The second may have been the same boat or another Trafalgar, west of Trondheim, travelling northeast at speed. A PLA tracked it for over an hour.’
‘A PLA near Trondheim?’ Astashenkov growled. ‘I don’t remember anything from last week’s. . . .’
‘Admiral Belikov, sir. The boat is under the personal orders of the Commander-in-Chief.’
‘Ah, yes . . .’ he nodded, pretending to know. ‘And what do you conclude from these two – unusual – reports?’
‘The communications security breach was carelessness,’ the Captain Lieutenant answered a little too quickly.
‘Or deliberate. . . .’
A silence hung in the air as they pondered the significance of the Admiral’s remark.
‘Indeed, sir.’
His eyes searched the chart. It was rare for NATO submarines to be detected so easily; he’d have liked to capitalize on the situation, and maintain the tracking, but the PLA near Trondheim had lost the target. He wasn’t surprised.
Admiral Andrei Belikov, Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Fleet, had a square, lined face, with dark hair, thick at the sides but absent on top. He pushed his heavy-framed spectacles onto the bridge of his nose as Astashenkov entered his large, windowless office in the command centre.
Belikov gestured to a chair.
‘Sit down, Feliks. Interesting briefing?’
‘Nothing you don’t know already, I imagine,’ Astashenkov replied pointedly.
Belikov looked momentarily discomfited.
‘Meaning?’
‘I’m sure you know what’s going on without having to attend a briefing, Andrei.’
‘You’re annoyed that you didn’t know about that PLA in the Norwegian Sea. I’m not surprised; I would be too, in your place. But Grekov insisted on secrecy.’
He removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. He’d planned to involve his deputy in the KGB operation, but later rather than sooner. The chances of failure had always been high and if the plan came to nothing, the fewer who knew about it the better.
‘Feliks, there’s a little scheme underway, involving us and the intelligence departments which, if it’s successful, could be the most significant since James Walker gave us US Navy submarine secrets.
‘The British and Americans have developed a new mine which they believe is undetectable and unbeatable. If it came to war, they’d use them to close our harbours. They call them “Moray” mines, after that eel with the sharp teeth . . .’
‘Yes. I know about them, of course.’
Belikov paused for effect.
‘We think we’re about to get our hands on one!’
‘What? How?’
‘The boat detected near Trondheim was HMS Truculent. We were expecting her. That PLA you hadn’t been told about – it was there to pick up her trail, so we’d be ready to receive her and her little gift!’
‘A British submarine? Coming here?’ Astashenkov gasped. ‘To give us a secret weapon?’
Belikov folded his spectacles.
‘We need that mine, Feliks! They say it’s undetectable by sonar. If the Americans and the British were to seed our coastline with those weapons, they could destroy the Northern Fleet before it fired a shot!
‘Grekov himself ordered the KGB to give it top priority.’
‘But how has this been done?’
Andrei Belikov savoured his reply.
‘The key’s in the hands of a very old man who lives ne
ar here – exists might be a better word. A prisoner of the State. He’s close to death now, but he has a son. A son who’ll do almost anything to see his father free before he dies.’
* * *
Murmansk, USSR.
The Moscow correspondent of the American Broadcasting Corporation couldn’t stop the grin spreading across his fresh, Nordic face. Glasnost had opened countless doors for foreign journalists in the Soviet Union, but he’d never imagined the day would come when he’d be sitting inside the long, silver fuselage of a TU-95 maritime reconnaissance bomber, wearing the flying suit of a Soviet naval aviator.
Known as the Bear-D to NATO, the plane carried four giant turboprop engines, with double rows of contra-rotating propellers. The nose of the aircraft was glazed for observers to watch the sea below, and large bulges below the fuselage contained radar for locating shipping.
The pilot introduced himself simply as Valentin. He led the correspondent and his cameraman up a narrow, aluminium ladder into the cramped interior, followed by a technician from Gostelradio.
‘When there’s something to see, I’ll tell you,’ Valentin explained. ‘Your camera can film through the glass.’
The compartment was crammed with radar scopes. There was nowhere to sit.
‘Until then, you will be more comfortable in the back. There are seats there.’
He pointed to a narrow hatch.
‘Jeez! Are we sure ’bout all this, Nick?’ the American cameraman whispered from the side of his mouth.
‘I guess we do as the man says,’ the correspondent replied.
Passing the video camcorder ahead of them, they squeezed through the tunnel across the top of the bomb bay to the compartment behind the wing, which was equipped with seats as the pilot had promised.
It was going to be a long day. They’d left Moscow at 5 a.m., flying to Murmansk on a scheduled Aeroflot run. It was now 8.30 a.m. and they had to be back in time to catch the 3pm flight to Moscow, for a press conference with Admiral Grekov. Their material had to be on the satellite to New York soon after midnight if they were to make the evening news programmes on all four US networks.
It had never happened before – American journalists taking pictures of the US Navy from a Soviet spy plane. When offered it as a pool facility the networks had jumped at it.
They strapped themselves in as the first turboprop fired. The crewman thrust headsets into their hands, indicating that it was going to get noisy in there.
They were facing rearwards, and the seatbelts bit into their stomachs as the Bear accelerated down the long runway. Heavy with fuel for the long flight, it seemed to race ahead eternally before lifting sluggishly into the air.
There was no window in the rear compartment – just one dim, neon tube set into the roof. Claustrophobia gripped the two Americans, and from the expression on the face of the Russian cameraman, they knew he was similarly affected. It wasn’t going to be fun, this assignment.
They slept a little. Two full hours passed before the pilot called them.
Forward of the crawlway, the radar operators turned from their screens to stare with unrestrained curiosity. Having Americans aboard their plane was an idea as alien to them as to the TV team.
‘In five minutes you’ll see something,’ Valentin shouted through the intercom. He’d connected their headsets to the internal circuit.
‘Where are we?’ the correspondent called back.
‘About five hundred kilometres east of Iceland.’
‘There’s a lot of water down there. Looks pretty empty to me.’
‘Empty to you, but not to me,’ the pilot boasted. ‘We can always find your ships when we want to.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
The two cameramen squeezed onto the single seat in the forward observation bubble and adjusted their lenses.
‘You have a little microphone?’ the pilot enquired.
‘I’ve got a neck mike, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Put it inside your earphone. I’m switching to the frequency the Americans use. If they speak, you will hear.’
Nick fixed the microphone to his headset.
Suddenly the plane banked to the left and dived towards the sea.
‘Sheeit!’
Nick grabbed for a hand-hold.
‘Three ships in front!’ called the pilot.
The journalists peered through the glass, seeing nothing but the grey sea flecked with foam.
Then both cameramen moved at once, eyepieces jammed to their faces. They’d seen the long lines of the wakes.
‘Got them!’
The pilot dived and turned, skilfully keeping the American warships ahead of the plane’s nose. Five hundred metres from the water, he levelled out, overshot and began a long slow bank round to make another pass.
Nick was no expert, but he knew a carrier when he saw one.
‘Is that the Eisenhower?’
‘No. The Eisenhower’s much bigger. That’s the Saipan. Amphibious. For invasion. With her are one Spruance and one Ticonderoga.’
Nick felt uncomfortable at the ease with which his nation’s navy had been detected and identified by the Soviets.
‘One more pass. Okay?’
‘Yep.’
This time the Bear had slowed considerably. It banked over the Ticonderoga cruiser with its boxy superstructure housing the long-range, high-performance Aegis radar, and its deck covered with round hatches concealing Tomahawk and Standard missiles.
On the flight-deck of the USS Saipan, Nick counted six large helicopters. They flew low enough to see the deck crew gazing up at the circling plane.
‘Those guys’d go ape if they knew a US TV team was up here,’ he thought to himself.
‘Enough?’ Valentin’s voice in the headphones.
‘Well, I wouldn’t mind . . .’
‘But this is nothing. Don’t you want to see your big ship?’
‘Sure. Okay, we got enough here.’
The pressure was knee-buckling as the pilot pulled the TU-95 up steeply. A tighter, more intense vibration came from the engines as the propeller pitch sharpened, blades biting harder into the air to give them power for the climb.
Nick looked round. The radar operators ignored their screens, watching everything the Americans did.
‘How d’you know where to look?’ Nick asked into the microphone that pressed against his lips.
‘National Technical Means.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You don’t know? You Americans invented the words.’
‘Okay, but I didn’t. I’m no expert.’
The pilot found that hard to believe. The Americans must surely have given special training to the man given the unique chance to fly in a Soviet warplane.
‘Satellites. We have a radar satellite. Shows everything, even us.’
‘So you don’t need to use your own radar?’
‘That’s right. If we did, your sailors would know we were here.’
‘They know now!’
The plane levelled from the climb. The pilot’s fix for the Eisenhower was twenty minutes out of date. He’d guessed where she should have steamed to, but was wrong. There was no sign, not even a wake. He wouldn’t get a new fix from the radarsat for another ten minutes. It would look bad not to be able to find the big ship before then.
The radar operators turned back to their scopes, hands reaching for the control knobs.
‘Soviet Naval Aviation TU-95!’
The voice in the earphones was Texan. Nick’s cameraman looked round at him and frowned.
‘This is US Navy Tomcat on your port wingtip. Please acknowledge! Over!’
Heads whipped round to the left.
‘Sheeit!’
Just beyond the end of the wing a dull-grey fighter floated upwards, US Navy markings emblazoned on the side. Inside its long perspex canopy, two sinister black visors and oxygen masks were turned towards them.
‘Soviet TU-95 – you’re approaching a US Navy aircraft
carrier. Please maintain a distance of five miles from the ship. Acknowledge. Over.’
‘US fighter plane,’ Valentin’s voice answered, high-pitched with tension. ‘This is international airspace. Keep your distance! Over.’
‘Soviet aircraft –’ The Texan voice sounded tired. ‘The US carrier has a hot deck. For your safety, please make a left to maintain five miles from the ship. Acknowledge. Over.’
Nick braced himself for a sudden change of course, but there was none. The Tomcat rose and banked away, ostentatiously showing off the racks of missiles under its wings.
Suddenly the Bear lurched to the left. From the right came another Tomcat, streaking past their nose, scarcely feet away.
‘Christ! Somebody tell those guys there are US citizens in here!’ the cameraman yelled in alarm.
The radio had gone silent. There was no point in posturing any more. Each side knew what the other was about.
The nose went down. The rush of air past the fuselage grew louder as they gathered speed.
‘The Eisenhower is straight ahead. Soon you will have your pictures,’ Valentin barked through the intercom. He sounded angry. ‘They are very aggressive, your pilots. This is international airspace!’
Nick opted to say nothing.
Having failed to deflect the Tupolev from its course, the Tomcats settled one on each wingtip, indicating unmistakably that if the Russian showed the slightest sign of hostility towards the Eisenhower, they’d blow him out of the sky.
Ahead, the carrier came in view. The plane levelled off and dropped its speed. Nick guessed they were at about two thousand feet, but it was difficult to tell. The Tomcats dropped back to watch for the Tupolev’s bomb-doors opening, ready to rip open the Russian plane with their 20mm Vulcan cannon.
‘I will pass to the left of the ship, turn in front, and pass back on the other side,’ the pilot told them, calmer now.
‘She sure is big,’ Nick whistled.
‘Ninety-thousand tons. Eighty-five fighter planes on board. Nuclear weapons, too. Your navy has fifteen ships like that, our navy has none. They are a big threat to us.’
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