by Ian Slater
“That’s no friggin’ good,” said the torpedoman. “They could spot that on SATCON. Our warm wave’d be too close to the surface anyway. They’d pick us up on the satellite’s infrared.”
“Satellite can’t cover the whole ocean,” said the quartermaster.
“They don’t have to with us doin’ three and a half knots,” put in the planesman.
“Shit!” said the quartermaster. “I thought that yeo was a rain face.”
“Ah—” said the torpedoman, “what the hell? We’re probably worrying about nothin’—right?”
No one answered.
* * *
Walking into his cabin, Robert Brentwood drew the green curtains shut, tossed his cap onto its hook, and stood for a minute studying the map of the North Atlantic taped to the bulkhead above the safe. Three things worried him. First, the navigation computer was malfunctioning as a result of the last depth charge, so that unless he had a clear sky for a star fix, it was imperative the TACAMO aircraft make its rendezvous to give them their exact position. Even as the sub rose via slow and quiet release of ballast, feeling its way toward the surface to wait for the TACAMO, it was already drifting off position. Second, once Roosevelt began to move under power of the “switchblade” prop now sheathed in the forward ballast tank, the resistance caused by the towed array, normally of no consequence when the sub was at full speed, would decrease its five knots to three. He was bothered, too, by a seemingly unimportant incident — the fact that the hospital corpsman had interrupted him about Evans when he was giving his instructions about the MOSS to the electronics mate and sonar operator. It wasn’t the corpsman’s cutting into the conversation that bothered Robert Brentwood, but the anxiety behind it. That could spread faster than the flu that had killed Evans. Or had it? And could the orders he had given the mate and Sonar be carried out before the scheduled TACAMO rendezvous?
He depressed the intercom button for “Control” and told Zeldman to wake him two hours before the ETA of the TACAMO aircraft.
“Will do,” came Zeldman’s breezy reply. Before he lay down on the bunk, Brentwood took off his rubber sneakers, the reason for them — no noise shorts — bringing back Evans’s terrified face. He tried to think of something else, but it wasn’t easy. Civilians, he mused, always thought you got used to seeing death. Maybe you did on the battlefield. Maybe his youngest David, who had fought in Korea shortly after the beginning of the war, was used to it. And Ray — well, no one could hope to know what Ray thought anymore. The photos of David and Ray were on his desk in the antiroll gimbals mounting, as were those of his mom and dad and Lana. Lana was really the loner in the family, but he felt closer to her than any of them. Maybe it was because she was the second oldest of the four. What had happened to her since the spate she’d gotten into in Halifax? What had happened to all of them? It would be months before he would know — if he ever did — his ship crippled somewhere west of the mid-Atlantic ridge, and Soviet Hunter/Killers breaking out through the Greenland-Iceland-Norway Gap. If he was a betting man, he thought he would sit this one out. But fate had thrown the dice and he had no choice.
He lay back and pulled out Rosemary’s picture from his shirt pocket. He had had it laminated with plastic in London. It was crazy, he knew, but if he went down forever — if he was to die in the Roosevelt—the thought of her photo eaten away by the salt, devoured by some shark or other blood-crazed denizen, bothered him. If anyone else saw it, they would just assume he’d laminated it for normal wear and tear. True, too. He kissed her, popped the photo in his pocket, and reached up for his Walkman earphones. They were cold and he held them in his hands to warm them. A dank, sour smell assailed his nostrils. He sat up, peeled off a sock, and sniffed—”Holy”—took the other one off, and, balling them, prepared to pop them in the laundry hamper at the foot of the bunk. The first one was a perfect basket. The next shot was to be the winning goal in sudden death overtime. Seattle and the Celtics, eighty-four apiece. It missed. An omen?
Don’t be damn silly, he told himself, and plugged in the earphones. Rewinding the tape, he heard the high screech-like a torpedo closing. He stopped it, pushed “play,” and lay back. There were a lot of “ifs” hanging about, but one certainty he’d been taught at Annapolis was that when you’re the commanding officer, “there is no possibility of assist.” You had to be alert, and that meant you had to get sleep. “Remember Montgomery,” one of his instructors had been fond of saying. “Delegate authority until you’re needed.” You simply had to wait. He closed his eyes and listened to the timbre of Johnny Cash and “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” Problem was, would they finish the MOSS in time for the TACAMO rendezvous? He was wide awake.
CHAPTER FIVE
As a squally rain swept down from the North Sea over Surrey and Oxshott heath, Richard Spence, in search of Rosemary, pulled up the collar of his mackintosh and, berating himself for not having brought an umbrella, made his way uneasily along the sodden, slippery path, having to stop every fifty yards or so to wipe the condensation from his bifocals. In the fading light the shapes of the trees in the distance momentarily took on the shape of people, of what he wanted to see rather than what was there. Yet despite the foul weather, the pelting of the rain and the wind roaring through the big oaks, Spence found the ferocity of the storm strangely comforting. Compared to the quieter but tension-filled atmosphere of his house, the often brisling animosity between Rosemary and Georgina and the silent, but pain-filled, determination of his wife trying her best to cope with the death of their son, the vicissitudes of nature seemed to him, if not more manageable, then the least of his worries. He felt bad for feeling like this, realizing that for the men at sea, like Rosemary’s Robert and those on NATO’s lifeblood convoys en route from Canada and the United States, the Arctic-bred storms would be met with less equanimity. But at least nature didn’t come with a net of complexes woven about it; its moods were direct and unequivocal. With his daughters — who knew? Georgina’s smile could mean the very opposite of her intent, Rosemary’s bad temper with Georgina the very antithesis of her normal disposition.
He saw a figure on the path about a hundred yards away coming toward him, but whether or not it was Rosemary, he couldn’t be sure. From the walk, it seemed to be a woman, all right, but she was wearing a scarf about her head, the wind taking the cloth to a sharp point like one of the sleek bicycle race helmets that had been so popular following the Tour de France in July. The Tour de France — he wondered if he or the world would ever see one again.
Whoever it was had her head bent down against the rain, facial features hidden by the collar of a dark coat, dark brown like Rosemary’s or black, he couldn’t tell through the smear of the rain on his bifocals, the sweeping curtains of rain increasing in their intensity. He heard a dog barking somewhere nearby, but how close it was, whether it was anywhere near the figure, he couldn’t tell, his hearing these days not what it used to be, the main reason they had rejected him even for the army’s administrative reserve, relegating him instead to the home guard auxiliary. Not even the proper home guard, he thought wryly. In a way, it was worse than being rejected outright — a kind of waiting list of old crocks. Yet inside he felt the same as when he was fifty, and at times stood staring at the mirror in the morning, finding it difficult, except for the few streaks of gray in his hair, to believe he was in his late sixties — that the reflection looking back was him. Sometimes he felt like two different people.
It was Rosemary approaching, hands thrust deep in her brown jacket pocket, scarf whipping hard in the wind like the defiant flag of a surrounded army, reminding Richard of the trapped British Army of the Rhine, which, with the Americans’ Ninth Corps, was still reeling, trying to catch its breath in the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket.
“Daddy — what are you—?”
“That boy Williams—” he said, his face scrunching under the impact of freezing rain.
“Wilkins,” she said.
“He’s tried to kill himself.”<
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Her head shot up, rain-streaked cheeks making it impossible to see whether she’d been crying after the row back at the house.
“But—” she began, and stopped, realizing it must have something to do with her. Or did it? Perhaps the school had wanted to notify her because she was the boy’s teacher.
“Rose—” Now Richard Spence faltered, throat constricting, the sound of his voice swallowed by the frenzied sound of the wind in the big, dark oaks. Instead of finishing what he had intended to say, he put his hand on his daughter’s arm, turned her toward home, and began anew, his voice rising through the howl of the storm. “He left some kind of note apparently. The headmaster said the boy wants to have a word with you.” Richard stumbled and had to stop again to wipe his glasses. “I didn’t get any more details,” he lied. “We were rather flustered, I’m afraid, and Mother was worried about you being out in this.”
“Why on earth would he—” began Rosemary, but her words either trailed off or were inaudible to her father as they passed through a new onslaught of rain. She was already beginning to feel responsible for Wilkins, just as her father knew she would.
“I think…” said Richard, his eyes fixed on a branch bending dangerously. “C’mon!” he shouted, indicating the branch. “That’s near breaking point.” As they passed through the thick copse of alder before crossing the road, Rosemary felt his grip tighten on her arm. “I think the headmaster would like a chat.”
She pulled her coat higher against the storm’s rage, the wind’s rushing now like an angry sea, and for a moment she was assailed by fear for Robert, and the realization that the real reason behind her row with Georgina was her growing conviction that she was pregnant. Suddenly she felt guilty about everything, about what she now judged to be her unwarranted retorts to Georgina — she should have dealt with it with grace. She felt guilty about giving Wilkins a Saturday morning and for what she knew was an unreasonable anger toward the boy, wishing, for a dark second, that he had finished the job — her Shakespeare class would be much easier to teach.
As they emerged from the wooded area onto the grassy knoll, she was thinking how Shakespeare wasn’t necessarily a civilizing influence. What he did was to tear the wrappings of civility aside.
“You must understand,” Richard was saying, “the boy was — I should say is…” She didn’t get the rest of it and had to ask him to repeat it. “Clearly,” said Spence, “the boy’s very disturbed, and I don’t want you blaming yourself.”
Oh my God, thought Rosemary. It is something to do with me. He must have written something in the suicide note saying she’d driven him to it. She didn’t feel she could face Georgina.
When they reached the house, she saw Georgina at the window as they started up the crazy stone path. Richard saw her, too, as she left the window to open the front door.
“Now,” Richard cautioned Rosemary, “don’t you two start, for goodness’ sake.”
Georgina was the picture of sisterly concern. It was genuine — which made Rosemary feel worse. If she was pregnant — the thought of telling her parents mortified her. Besides, with a world at war, she wasn’t sure anyone should have a child. But then, she didn’t see how she could ever bring herself to—
“Rose!” It was her mother, holding one hand over the phone, looking frightened from the kitchen. “A Mrs. Wilkins wants to talk with you. She sounds terribly upset.”
“Oh Lord—” said Georgina sympathetically. “Tell her she’s not here, Mother.”
“Well I am here, aren’t I?” snapped Rosemary, instantly regretting her riposte. And then something else flew into her consciousness, like a bat suddenly exploding out of a deep, dark cave in a storm. It was the realization that Georgina’s beauty would unquestionably overwhelm Robert. Americans, she knew, were obsessed about large breasts, and Georgina was far better endowed than she. Like a Jersey cow.
“Hello,” she said, unknotting the head scarf as she took the phone. “Mrs. Wilkins—” Georgina saw her sister pale.
CHAPTER SIX
In Leningrad’s immaculate and cream-colored Nakhimov Secondary Naval Academy, whence he could smell the cold freshness of the harbor and see the historic cruiser Aurora tied up nearby, Admiral Brodsky watched the ruffles of wind racing over the surface of the Neva River, a burst of sunlight changing it from slate gray to Prussian blue. As chief liaison officer between the Northern Fleet, based in Severomorsk just north of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, and the Baltic Fleet, Brodsky seized any opportunity to visit the city, its czarist beauty so stunning that he had long ago decided that upon his retirement in another three years, he and his wife would move here when the Soviet forces were victorious.
Sitting by the second-story window facing the Neva, Brodsky had taken a break from signing the latest authorizations for merit-earned transfer for able-bodied soldiers and sailors who, after distinguishing themselves at the front, had been recommended for entry into the elite Fleet Air Arm.
One such applicant was Sergei Marchenko, a tank battalion commander whose leadership in the surprise, and massive, Soviet breakthrough at the Fulda Gap on NATO’s central front had earned him high marks, as did his later performance when the “river of Soviet T-90s,” as the Western press had called it, split into two, one stream heading south toward Munich to link up with the armored spearheads rumbling west from Czechoslovakia along the fertile Danube Valley, the other stream wheeling to the right of Fulda, racing toward Germany’s Northern Plain. Here the Soviet divisions had smashed through to Schleswig-Holstein, capturing the vital NATO ports of Bremen, Hamburg, and Antwerp, and were presently closing the pincers about the trapped British Army of the Rhine and elements of the U.S., German, and Dutch armies. To Brodsky’s displeasure, Sergei Marchenko’s name had been submitted to Brodsky by his father, Kiril Marchenko, a senior advisor to the Politburo, and there was no doubt that on the surface the applicant clearly deserved the chance to join the air arm. But Brodsky had refused. There had been the problem of a slight deficiency in the vision of his left eye. Despite the fact that he wore corrective contact lenses, which had obviously been more than adequate for duty in the tanks corps, the Fleet Air Arm demanded twenty-twenty vision. Kiril Marchenko had appealed the decision, using Politburo letterhead, brusquely pointing out that if Adolf Galland, Nazi Germany’s top air ace, could fly with only one eye, surely the Fleet Air Arm could accept a man with two!
Brodsky refused. Now Marchenko’s father had written Brodsky again, a little more contrite, saying that the operation to correct his condition was available in Moscow’s famous vertyashcheesya kreslo—”revolving chair”—clinic, recognized before the war, even by the Americans, as one of the best in the world.
Brodsky moved away from the window and returned to his desk. He paused, gold Parker in hand, his aide, a captain, entering the office impatiently but stopping abruptly when he saw the pen wavering above the authorization form. Kiril Marchenko was a powerful main, twice denied. Then again, the captain knew the admiral was right not to sign anything without ruminating on it. You could end up as latrine inspector in Mongolia, signing things in too much of a hurry; a general, or rather ex-general, whom both of them knew had lost his dacha in the forest of Nikolina Gora outside Moscow because he’d hastily signed requisitions for three large American freezers and four hundred pairs of imported British shoes for a unit that didn’t exist.
When Brodsky did sign the authorization, he added a rider that, as per regulations, his permission for Sergei’s transfer to Fleet Air Arm school was conditional upon written confirmation from the eye clinic that not only had the operation been performed, but it was satisfactory.
Brodsky wrote slowly, as if, the captain mused, he were creating a work of art for the Leningrad Museum.
The admiral sat back, admiring his work and recapping the pen. “No more transfer requests, I hope. Someone has to get NATO dirt in their contacts.”
The captain smiled dutifully, though he didn’t get the connection. Nor did he
care; the message just decoded from the Yumashev was alarming. No more than 20 percent of depth charges — RBU rockets and drum charges alike — had detonated during an attack on what was believed to be a U.S. nuclear submarine.
“What class?” asked Brodsky.
“Sea Wolf Two, I think, Admiral. We’re not positive, but time/speed calculations make it possible it is an American submarine out of Holy Loch.”
Brodsky pressed him on this, for while the Yumashev was important, the location of forty-eight independently targeted reentry warheads was infinitely more pressing.
The aide unrolled the chart of the North Atlantic. “We’ve dispatched three Hunter/Killers to the area,” he assured Brodsky.
“In two hours it can be a hundred miles away in either direction,” said Brodsky, waving his arm, the weak afternoon sun reflecting off his sleeve’s four gold rings.
“The Yumashev thinks it inflicted damage on the sub, Admiral. There was a dramatic change in the sub’s noise signature following the attack.”
The admiral grumbled, grateful for small mercies. If the Yumashev was correct, this information would at least narrow the search area. “Have we aerial reconnaissance on this?”
“A long-range Badger with fighter cover, sir. The only plane available at the moment. Later today we might be able to request—”
“No — we can’t wait,” said the admiral, putting out his hand for the Yumashev’s message. “If they think it is a Sea Wolf, I don’t want any time wasted. Order in-flight refueling for the fighters.”
“Yes, sir.” The captain had already done this, knowing he could always rescind the order if the admiral hadn’t agreed.
Brodsky’s heavily lined face beneath the thick, black hair that belied his age became a scowl as he read the message, jaw clenched. “Where were—?”
The aide handed him a sheet of the buff-colored top secret forms listing all RBU antisubmarine warfare rockets and drum charges as a batch originating from one of the armament factories in Tallinn, the Estonian capital.