It occurred to Alexeyev that when a man saw dead relatives or friends, that was an omen that he was near his own death, and that the dead ones were there waiting to escort him to the next world. That thought made some of the fear return, and he became aware of his heart hammering in his chest.
Perhaps there was an exception to the appearance of the dead foreshadowing his own death, he thought. If the spirit were here to warn him, he might well live on. That is, if he heeded the warning.
“Did you come to warn me?” he asked Matveev.
She took a last puff of her foul-smelling cigarette and put it out in the ashtray, then looked over at him and nodded solemnly.
Distance, she said seriously without speaking, her thought coming into his mind, her lips not moving, her expression a frown of worry.
“Distance,” he repeated dully. What did she mean? “Do you mean—?“
But before he could finish his thought, Matveev became transparent, then turned to mist, the mist turning to smoke that wafted toward the ceiling with the dying smoke of her cigarette, and then all traces of her were gone but for the smell of her smoke.
As he stared at the chair near the table, his mouth dropped open, and just then Natalia walked in, her face crumpled into disgust, fanning her face.
“Georgy, what’s wrong? Dear man, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. And what have you been smoking? That is truly foul. Did you pick up a bad habit?”
What should he tell her, he wondered. That he had just seen a ghost, the apparition of his dead chief engineer, and it had been she who had been smoking? He felt his pulse still racing and his lungs bursting, trying to get in air, hoping Natalia wouldn’t notice and suddenly make a fuss over him.
“It’s Kovalov,” he said haltingly, trying to bring his breathing back under control. “Sergei was trying a new cigarette brand, but it was even more foul than he could tolerate. It must have gotten on my clothes from when we were drinking at the Lamb’s Valhalla.”
“That awful place. But it’s odd,” she said, picking up clothing from the floor. “I didn’t smell it last night when you came to bed late.”
“You were fast asleep,” he said. “I don’t think you would have smelled a dead skunk the way you were snoring.”
She smiled at him. “I don’t snore,” she said, smiling, their running joke since he’d spent his first night with her, the noise of her at first keeping him awake, but now it was somehow comforting. The first night aboard ship was always difficult without that sound.
“Woman, you snore loud enough to shatter windows,” he said, reaching out to slap her hindquarters. He was starting to feel normal again, and the fact that Natalia hadn’t noticed him turning blue from lack of oxygen, or noticed his trembling hands, encouraged him.
“Save my spanking for later and come eat your breakfast, smelly man,” she laughed. “Hurry up, you’ll be late for your conference with the admiral.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to smile at her and wondering if she would see through him to his inner turmoil, but Natalia had already hurried back to the kitchen, her mind on preparing the food. He found his black eyepatch and put it on, then strapped on his submariner’s watch.
As he got up to go to the kitchen, he noticed that there was no ashtray on the table, no K-561 lighter, nor any sign of a cigarette butt. But the smell lingered on.
As Captain First Rank Georgy Alexeyev waited for the admiral to arrive, his mind kept returning to Matveev. What the hell did her appearance mean? And what had she meant by saying distance?
He looked over at Kovalov, wondering if he dared tell his old friend about Matveev’s manifestation.
Finally the secure conference room’s inner door opened and Admiral Gennady Zhigunov hurried into the room, nodding at Alexeyev and Kovalov, who had stood and snapped to rigid attention.
“Seats, please, gentlemen,” Zhigunov said. The admiral was in his sixties, a grizzled tall figure, still considered handsome by Alexeyev’s female officers. He had a full head of completely gray hair and a chiseled face, time worn and beginning to sag. He took his seat at the end of the table opposite the large flatpanel display. He dropped his pad computer on the stainless steel table’s surface and reached into his inner tunic pocket, withdrawing a blue pack of cigarettes and his lighter with the emblem of Northern Fleet Command. The unfiltered French brand Zhigunov favored, Gauloises Brunes, made noxious smoke, but nothing like Matveev’s, Alexeyev thought. He offered the submarine commanders cigarettes. Alexeyev waved him off, but Kovalov took one, taking the admiral’s lighter when he’d lit up. Kovalov smoked a different brand and had a general contempt for Western cigarettes, but he acted as if he smoked Gauloises every day.
“Have you both read the mission profile?” Zhigunov puffed hard on his cigarette, tapping out his ash on a tray he’d pulled over from the center of the table. When the officers nodded, he reached for a remote and projected on the screen, the display showing a detailed map of the globe taken from high over the north pole.
“So. The mission, then. At the time to be determined, Captain Alexeyev, your Belgorod will sortie from Zapadnaya Litsa Submarine Base and make your way north to the Barents Sea, where you will rendezvous with Captain Kovalov’s Losharik, which will leave port from Olenya Guba and rendezvous with Belgorod here.” A bright red dot lit up north of the Kola Peninsula. “You will take aboard Losharik while submerged.”
“Admiral?” Kovalov said, hesitantly interrupting while stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette in the ash tray. “We’ve never docked Losharik to Belgorod at sea, and never while both units are submerged.”
Zhigunov nodded, seeming distracted, while he put out his cigarette and lit a second. The room was becoming filled with smoke. Alexeyev had a momentary thought about his conversation with Kovalov the night before, about dying in a depth-charged submarine, and unbidden, a flash memory came to him, of the upper level of Kazan when the first compartment exploded and the passageway leading to the escape chamber had filled with flames and smoke. With a conscious effort, Alexeyev blinked away the waking nightmare.
“Something wrong, Georgy?” Zhigunov asked, flashing Alexeyev a penetrating gaze.
“No, sir,” Alexeyev said, trying to keep his facial expression hard. “Please continue, Admiral.”
“When Belgorod departs, you will be loaded with three Status-6 weapons. When you arrive on-station, you’ll transfer them one at a time to Losharik, which will place them in their mission-determined locations.”
Alexeyev bit his lip. Firing an exercise-shot Status-6, which his Belgorod had done a dozen times, was routine. Transferring a dummy mockup of a Status-6 to the deep-diver Losharik he’d only done once, and it had been a disaster. He was still smarting from the post-exercise critique of that endeavor.
“Sir, if I may,” Alexeyev said slowly, “transferring a Status-6 to Losharik is problematic. We’ve never managed to do that well. Our only attempt—“
“I know, Captain Alexeyev,” Zhigunov said. “I’m well aware of the exercise failure, but I am confident that this time you will be successful. Unlike the exercise you participated in, you will be in shallow water. A dropped weapon can easily be recovered by Losharik and the mission will continue.”