Ultra Deep (9 page)

“It would have to be done quickly, Dane.”

Brande slid his chair up to the desk and picked up the phone. He dialed the San Diego number, but Thomas was out. He asked the graduate student who answered to have her tracked down, thinking this was the one time they needed pagers.

Thomas called back eight minutes later.

“Rae, I want you to start rounding up people.”

“What people? Why?”

“Can’t tell you why just yet. I want you, Kim, Bob Mayberry, Ingrid Roskens, Svetlana and Valeri. Where’s the
Orion
?*

“She’s over Harbor One. They just delivered two new turbines.”

“Call Mel and order her back to San Diego immediately, full turns. Call the suppliers and get everything we need to fully stock her.”

“Dane! What’s going on?”

“Tell you as soon as I get there.” Brande hung up. “Will the Navy fly us west, Avery?”

“You can take my Gulfstream, Dane. If you’re going to do this”

“No promises, just yet. But we’ll get the wheels in motion.”

“You bring a contract with you?” Dokey asked.

Hampstead grinned ruefully. “Slipped my mind.”

“We’ll bill you,” Dokey said.

“What’s going to happen when the word gets out?” Brande asked. “Assuming it will.”

“Oh, it will. It’s just a matter of time. I imagine there could be some panic exhibited.”

“You have a penchant for understating things, Avery,” Brande said.

*

1443 HOURS LOCAL, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

Carl Unruh spent the morning and afternoon with a telephone pressed against his ear. His left ear was red and sore. He had missed lunch and his stomach rumbled from time to time. Other than the intrusion on his concentration, he figured the missed meal was good for his waistline.

Outside his window, it was beginning to snow, tiny brittle flakes crashing out of a gray overcast. It set the tone for his day.

Shortly after one o’clock, he got a call from the DDO, the Deputy Director of Operations.

“Carl, one of my people working at Sheremetevo Airport dropped a note on us,” Oren Patterson told him.

“Somebody in Moscow is going somewhere?” 

“Right. You know who Colonel General Dmitri Ivanovich Oberstev is?”

“Director of the
Red
Star
project”

“And Colonel Alexi Cherbykov?”

“The director’s aide”

“And Admiral Grigori Orlov?”

“C-in-C, Navy”

“You got ’em all. You’re getting good at this, Carl.”

“That makes me feel better, Oren”

“Anyway, there’s a couple more people our asset wasn’t sure of. Vladimir Yevgeni may have been one of them. They all crawled aboard a VIP Ilyushin transport and took off.”

“It’s the right composition for a group we’re very interested in,” Unruh said. “Did your asset get a destination for this bunch?”

“No, but the plane was not headed in the direction of Plesetsk. Going out on a limb, I’ll say they’re going to Vladivostok.”

“The heavy hitters are going to conduct the search, you think?”

“Either that, or the boss man is so pissed at them, he’s told them to get it back personally.”

“I’d go for that, Oren. Put Oberstev in flippers and have him drag it back. How about data on the package?”

“We’re still poking and prodding.”

Unruh wanted to tell him to prod his sources with some red-hot branding irons, but knew better than to suggest it. They could only move as fast as they could move without bringing attention to themselves.

In mid afternoon, at an instruction from his secretary over the intercom, he cut short one conversation and punched another button on his phone.

“Jack, if you’re not calling with good news, I don’t want to talk to you,” he told Evoy.

“I’m calling to say we’re showing seven major CIS battle-wagons en route to the scene. I think we can assume a few submarines, also. NSA eavesdropped on several messages they’re sure were aimed at subs because they were coded on ELF frequencies.”

“What’s the ETA on the warships?”

“The
Kirov
— she’s a rocket cruiser — is leading a task force of three and is about seventy-six hours away. There’s a task force with the
Kynda
that will hit there ten or twelve hours later. Again, they may have a sub closer.”

“Anything else?”

“There’s a deep submersible named the
Sea
Lion
that’s been operating in the Barents Sea. As of two hours ago, when we had a KH-11 go over, the submersible has been recovered, and the research vessel is headed for Murmansk at seventeen knots. That’s top speed for that ship, Carl.”

“Interpretation?”

“I’d say that the submersible at Vladivostok is inoperative. They’re going to fly this hummer eastward. We’re watching to see if they fly a Candid into Murmansk.”

The Candid was the NATO code name for the Ilyushin II-76, a heavy military transport.

“Good, Jack. Let me know.”

Unruh hung up, but the intercom blared immediately. “Yes, Joanie?”

“Wilson Overton is on three.”

“You told him to call back sometime?”

“More or less, but he’s rather insistent.”

“Okay.” He pressed the three button. “How you doing, Will?”

“I’m okay. How about you, Mr. Director?”

“Holding the fort down. What can I do for you?”

“I need a confirmation. I’ve tried to reach a number of people today, but they’re either out of the office, out of town, or out of the country.”

“Sounds good to me,” Unruh said, meaning it.

He did not like the thought of confirming anything for anyone outside of the agency or the White House.

“My sources tell me that a CIS rocket went down in the Pacific Ocean. They tell me that a nuclear reactor is running wild.”

“That right?” Unruh asked, his mind racing for alternatives to, “no comment.”

“Uh-huh. The way I’ve got it, and the way the
Post’s
going to run it, this nuclear reactor is going to radiate the whole Pacific Ocean. Is that right, Mr. Director?”

“I don’t know how one tiny reactor is supposed to contaminate something as big as the Pacific.”

“It’s tiny?”

“It must be if it was on a rocket. Is that what you’re telling me, Will?”

“Are you confirming the facts, Mr. Director?”

“You know who you ought to talk to, Will? Robert Balcon. He might know something I don’t.”

“Balcon hasn’t been available all day.”

“Did you call the CIS Embassy?” Unruh asked. Hell, it was their rocket. Let them deal with the media.

“They’re the ones who are out of the country.”

“Damn? Is that right?”

“You’re the Director of Intelligence. Aren’t you supposed to know things like that?”

Unruh sighed. “Read me what you’ve got.”

He had learned early on to never volunteer anything, but also to never lie to the press. He listened closely to Overton’s story.

“Well, Mr. Director?”

“If I were you, Will, I’d double-check your facts on the size of the reactor.”

“But the rest is accurate.”

“A Soviet A2 went down a couple thousand miles west of Hawaii, though I hope you won’t publish those coordinates. It carried a component for their space station. That’s all I’ll say right now, Will.”

“I can live with that. Thanks, Mr. Unruh.”

Unruh hoped to hell that Overton could not find many more confirmations before press time.

*

1751 HOURS LOCAL, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

Valeri Ivanovitch Dankelov spent the day at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, then drove his two-year-old Chevrolet Corsica back to his apartment in Pacific Beach.

It was a small apartment on the second floor, 800-square feet, with two bedrooms, a medium-size living room, and a slim view of the Pacific Ocean between two condominiums across the street. It was about twice the size of the apartment Dankelov had grown up in Leningrad.

Sometimes, he felt like a pebble rattling around in an oversized can, and he hated to admit, even to himself, that he liked it.

Even when Dankelov had left home for Leningrad State University, he had been pressed by people, forced to share accommodations in a boarding house with four roommates. If there was anything he thoroughly and quietly enjoyed about his time in the United States, it was the sense of elbow-room.

He also liked water. Leningrad State University, where he had begun studies in civil engineering, was sited on Vasilevsky Island in the Neva River delta. Peter the Great had imagined the area to be Russia’s version of Venice, but the canals he had begun were later filled in.

It was at the Leningrad State University where Dankelov’s penchant for things mechanical had been wed to a newly discovered love for the sea, especially the Baltic Sea which had always been there for him, and therefore had gone unnoticed. The Soviet Union, in a quest for new sources of energy, was reinforcing study in oceanography and robotics, and Dankelov’s academic abilities and interests did not go unremarked. He was selected for advanced study at Lomonosov University in Moscow. From those days, he most remembered intense intellectual conversations, long walks among the harried pedestrians on Vernadsky Prospekt, and the December 1980 commemoration of John Lennon’s death in the park across from the university.

Upon graduation from Lomonsov, he was one of five selected for further study at the Scripps Institute. It was an honor to be chosen, and Dankelov appreciated, not only the opportunity for academic and practical experience among some of the world’s best oceanographers, but also the chance to see a world beyond the limits of Leningrad and Moscow.

There was something of a diplomatic flap when Dankelov and Svetlana Polodka, one of his fellow postgraduate students, were approached by Dane Brande and offered both practical experience and jobs. After discussions between the United States Department of State and the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Dankelov and Polodka were allowed two-year extensions on their student visas. Some other accommodation was reached by someone, allowing them to accept salaries. Salaries, Svetlana had been quick to note, that amounted to life savings for most Soviet citizens.

Salaries, Dankelov had replied, which rapidly evaporated in the San Diego standard of living.

And six years later, they were on the fourth extension of their visas. The authorities in Moscow approved because Dankelov and Polodka provided scientific reports (a procedure which Dane Brande thoroughly endorsed) that were helpful to other Russian scientists and oceanographers. The U.S. Department of State approved the extensions because Dankelov had become something of an expert in acoustic controls as a result of the feedback he received from his Russian counterparts. The same could be said for Svetlana Polodka, who specialized in fiber-optics communication.

Still, even with the freedoms and the substantial income, Dankelov often longed to return to Leningrad. There is a national consciousness among Soviet citizens of a vaporous, but undeniable, linkage to the
rodina
, the motherland. He had already made up his mind that he would return upon the expiration of the current visa.

Svetlana did not feel the same way, and that basic difference between them had terminated a seven-month affair begun in the first year of their association with Marine Visions. Dankelov frequently found himself thinking in terms of a family of his own, and he was not about to start one in the United States.

If he did not hurry, he would not start one in Leningrad or Moscow, either. In his middle thirties, he did not have illusions about his attractiveness. He was short, and he was broad. His face matched his stature. He assumed others thought of him as brown. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Swarthy complexion. He was given to wearing brown suits and dull neckties. He had never fully acclimated to the casual atmosphere permeating the MVU labs and workshops.

Dankelov climbed the outside stairway to his balcony, crossed it, and unlocked the door. Inside, he placed his briefcase on his desk in the living room, then hung up his suit coat in the closet.

In the kitchenette, he took a frozen Swiss steak dinner from the freezer and placed it in the microwave. He had not forgotten the food shortages in his homeland, and he often felt guilty living among the abundance available to him here.

He went back to the living room, turned on the television for the evening network news, then rewound the tape on the answering machine.

The only message was from Kaylene Thomas. She wanted him to call her at the office immediately. He did not know what time she had called.

While he dialed the office number, he watched as Tom Brokaw solemnly summarized a copyrighted story of the
Washington
Post
.

The telephone was still ringing on the other end when Dankelov replaced his receiver.