“Even if it was,” said Bill, “what’s it gotta do with us?”
“Plenty,” said Arnold Morgan. “If someone’s sneaking around the world’s oceans in a goddamned submarine I don’t know about, then that someone is up to something devious; and when it’s devious, I don’t like it. And when I don’t like something on behalf of this government, then someone’s gonna need to come up with a few answers. Or I might get downright awkward, instead of just curious.”
“How do you feel now, Admiral?” asked Laura.
“I’m curious. And I want to know where the Taiwan submarine is. I wanna know exactly when it returns home. I don’t expect to be told where it’s been, but I’ll be watching them all very carefully.”
Lunch ended at 1500, and Bill and Laura were driven to the airport for their flight home to Kansas. Bill’s brother Ray would meet them.
At the White House, Arnold Morgan was talking to the CIA, trying to determine the comings and goings of Taiwan’s two Hai Lung Class Dutch-built submarines. Their numbers, 793 and 794, were painted high up on the side of the sail. They were easy to identify. The officer on the Far Eastern desk promised to get someone on the case within the hour.
It was five weeks before any serious intelligence emerged. Around the second week in April a few facts started to fall into place. There did appear to be a pattern to the ships’ movements — a somewhat mysterious pattern.
Only one of the Hai Lungs left its base at a time. And when one left it did not return for eleven weeks. Each time one returned, there was a ten-day period when both the submarines were moored alongside each other, and then one would leave, again for eleven weeks. There was no evidence as to where the submarines went. But they always dived thirty miles outside the harbor and were not seen again until they reappeared off the base.
Arnold Morgan pondered. “Sounds like five weeks out, five weeks back, one on station. That little Hai Lung couldn’t make more than eight or nine knots on a long journey, two hundred to two hundred and twenty miles a day, which means it could cover seven thousand to seven thousand five hundred in five weeks. No doubt, the Hai Hu could have been the submarine they saw off Kerguelen. But was it? That diesel could have traveled anywhere in five weeks.” Morgan walked over to his computer and pulled up his world mapping program. He measured seven thousand miles and described a large arc that covered the area in which the submarine could have traveled.
The Hai Lung could have traveled almost anywhere from the Bering Strait to the Cape of Good Hope — by way of the coasts of Mozambique, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or just about any of the islands in the South Pacific. “It could have gone to the Antarctic,” growled Morgan. “My gut tells me it went to Kerguelen. That’s where my boys saw it.”
Admiral Morgan put in a call to the Baldridge ranch. “Mr. Bill and Miss Laura are both out riding now,” he was told by the maid who answered the phone. “We lost some cattle in a storm out in the western end of the ranch last night. They both rode out of here right after lunch…and I guess they’ll be back all depending on whether they find ’em real quick or not.”
“Okay,” the Admiral said. “Please leave word that I called. I’ll try again this evening.”
They finally connected at 2100. It had been a day of searches for both cattle and submarines, and Arnold Morgan still had no confirmed fix on the destination of the Taiwanese submarines. He recounted to Bill the pattern that had emerged. “I know you’ve been there and I haven’t, Bill,” he concluded. “But you think there’s something going on down there, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what’s going on, if anything. But I do know for sure we have two major mysteries — one missing research vessel, which may have come under attack, and one prowling submarine from Taiwan. They may be connected.”
“Two outlandish happenings in precisely the same spot are likely to be connected,” agreed the Admiral. “I’d send a boat down there if I had even a remote idea what we were looking for. But I haven’t, and I can’t really make out a very good case for taking any action.
“I think I’m going to thicken up our surveillance in Taiwan — something’s afoot, and we’re in the dark. And I need light. Lasers, preferably.”
6
Admiral George Morris was not normally light on his feet. He was a big, heavy man with a superior brain, and a slow ponderous way of moving. A widower, he slept flat on his back, snoring like the old Chicago Superchief running late. He slumbered only just above the level of unconsciousness traditionally associated with the dead. Telephones by night he neither heard nor answered. Hibernating grizzlies have been known to be more receptive.
Which was why in the small hours of the morning of April 21, young Naval Lieutenant John Harrison was standing in the Admiral’s bedroom at Fort Meade shaking him and imploring him to awaken. He had turned on every light and was about two steps from pouring a small glass of cold water strategically upon the forehead of the Director of National Security, a mutually agreed-upon tactic if all else should fail, when George Morris finally awoke.
“What in the name of Christ is going on,” he said, blinking at the lights. “Someone declared war?”
“Nossir. But there is something we think may be important.”
“Jeez. It had better be. What the hell’s the time?”
“Er, 0300, sir.”
“Well what’s going on, Lieutenant, speak up for Christ’s sake.”
“Something about those Kilo submarines going to China.”
Admiral Morris was on his feet before the sentence was completed. The image of the ferocious Arnold Morgan rose up in his mind’s eye. “Christ, man! Why didn’t you say so?”
“I was waiting for you to wake up, sir.”
“Wake up! Wake up! I am awake, aren’t I? Gimme three minutes and we’re outta here, got a car outside?”
“Yessir.”
“Get in it. I’m right with you.”
Inside the Director’s office, a set of satellite pictures was already spread out on his desk. Two night duty officers were comparing details, staring through a magnifier into a light box.
“There’s not much doubt about it, sir,” one of them said as Admiral Morris approached. “The three Kilos in the shipyard at Nizhny Novgorod are almost ready to leave. And judging by these pictures, it’s not going to be long.”
The officer stood up. “Take a look, sir. See that scaffold all over the sail on boats one and two a week ago? Look at it on the pictures we got last night. It’s reduced by at least two-thirds. You can see that the third boat now has less stuff all over it than it did two weeks ago. These things, as you know, sir, tend to finish quickly. They don’t have to do much in the way of trials until they get to the coast…they’re going to be gone very soon.”
Admiral Morris considered the evidence before him. The satellite images dramatically highlighted the speed with which the Russian submarines were being readied. It was clear that if the work progressed at this rate, the ships could be moved onto a transport barge within two weeks. It looked as if the three hulls would travel together, possibly on barges and probably with an escort.
The CIA had intercepted several signals between Beijing and Moscow, and two of them suggested that there would be heightened security in the light of the unfortunate accident that had befallen the last two Kilos on their way home to China. It was not, however, clear whether that security would stretch to the inland part of the journey.
The director did not need to study the pictures for long. Lieutenant Harrison handed him three additional satellite photographs showing several hundred miles south — the stretch of the Volga River, which passes the sprawling industrial city of Volgograd. Risen from the ruins of the 1942 to 1943 siege by the German army, Volgograd occupies almost sixty miles of the bank of the Volga. It is here that the river changes course, on the great southeastern bend down to the Caspian Sea.