Assuming she lived, she thought.
“What are the specifics?” Anna asked.
Lilya leaned forward, putting her elbows on her knees, drilling her blue eyes into Anna’s eyes. “There will be a contact waiting for you in Severomorsk at Northern Fleet Headquarters. Over the coming weeks, you’ll meet with her. She will educate you as to each task. The specifics are sensitive, so you will be required to memorize all technical information. You’ll be given various tools to accomplish the work, all disguised as normal items — toiletries — or tools of your trade — sex toys, yes?”
Anna nodded. “What if my baggage is searched?”
“All the items will pass a normal security inspection. No one could find them unless he knew exactly what he was seeking.”
Anna exhaled, blowing out her cheeks. “I understand.”
“Again, Svetlana, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of your mission,” Lilya said. “The placement of these so-called Poseidon torpedoes must be stopped. By any means at our disposal.”
“There’s a driver waiting for you now,” Zhabin said, standing and extending his hand to Anna. She stood up and shook the admiral’s hand. “He’ll take you to the airport. Your plane is waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Anna said to Zhabin. She turned to shake Lilya’s hand. “Madam Chairwoman. I’ll not disappoint you.”
“I know you’ll do fine,” Zhabin said, shutting the office door behind her.
The flight in the jet with her, once again, as the only passenger, seemed to take longer than the flight to Moscow. As she stared out the window, holding a rocks glass of vodka, she reflected that her career had started strangely and was progressing even more strangely. She’d been a young psychology student at the prestigious M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, concentrating on human sexuality and sexual dysfunction. It was a field of study that had few students, which was good for her, since it meant less competition for coveted post-graduate assignments. After completing one course concentrating on sex workers, her professor asked her to his office after the final exam. She’d been worried that there might be something wrong, but he was all smiles and poured them drinks as he waved her to a seat opposite his desk. He told her she’d gotten a perfect score on the final exam and that her term paper was the best he’d ever read, and that he wanted to collaborate with her over the summer to write a paper for publication.
As she’d worked with him, he eventually disclosed that as a sideline, he worked for the FSB, the internal security branch of Russia’s intelligence agencies. He recruited her to the Brigade of the Testovaya Zhena, the test wives. She had been repelled and intrigued at the same time. Her professor had said this would be a perfect way to study sex workers in the military and help shape policy for decades to come. For example, he’d said, what about the females in the military? There were no sex workers for them, presumably because they could be satisfied with relations with male members of the military, but didn’t that impede morale and good discipline? And what of people who were homosexual? Would test wives service lesbians? What about male homosexuals? The questions were numerous and the issues heavy, he’d said.
And so it was that Svetlana Anna, after graduate school graduation, had joined the Navy’s test wives. At first, she thought the work would be disgusting. After all, one thing was clear, that in the Navy, in a combat vessel, forward deployed, water was rationed, and people routinely went days without showering. Would this lack of personal hygiene make the work awful? But Anna had always had a strong sex drive, and growing up, it had threatened to get her in trouble numerous times. Could that be harnessed in the service of the country?
The answer was that it indeed could. The first few years were actually pleasant, but as Anna got older, she was less sought out as a companion. But the Navy had seen leadership skills in her, and had promoted her to the rank of captain third rank and put her in command of a group of test wives and requested she keep working.
It had gone well until the meeting with Admiral Zhabin and Chairwoman Lilya.
And now it was time to execute the next plan, since the sabotaging of the torpedo control cabinets had failed, which she’d found out when the ship launched the supercavitating torpedo.
In Anna’s coveralls pocket was a 5.45 mm PSM pistol, a weapon barely bigger than her palm, though it was heavy. In the other pocket was a package of Semtex plastic explosive, over a kilogram of it, the bulk of it making her pocket bulge. This wasn’t the watered-down Semtex of the 2020s, it was the good stuff from the Cold War, 1980s vintage plastic explosive. A kilogram would be sufficient to blow up the entire atmospheric control machinery room, but she wasn’t relying on that alone. The atmospheric controls would assist in this particular task.
Anna made her way down two sets of steep stairs — ladders, the Navy called them — to the zero three deck, until she emerged into the same space where she’d walked forward to the weapon electronics room. Instead, she walked aft down a narrow passageway, passing doors to other electronics rooms — sonar, battlecontrol, the second captain AI system — until at the end of the passageway she reached the machinery room marked with a sign reading, MASHINNOYE OTDELENIYE KONTROLYA ATMOSFERY—atmospheric controls machinery room. This room didn’t have a combination pad lock, she noted. She turned the knob and let herself in.
She’d expected the room to be empty. She’d made her way below easily, unobserved, since the ship was at action stations, and every person on board had a place to stand his or her watch to shoot torpedoes — or evade them. But a watchstander stood next to the oxygen generator, or the bombit’, which meant “bomb.”
From Anna’s studies with her SVR contact in Severomorsk, she’d learned that the “bomb” was so named because it made hydrogen and oxygen in the exact molecular mix to explode with enough power to destroy everything in the machinery room, maybe even breach the hull. The bomb took distilled pure water into its two meter by two meter box of steel and placed it between high voltage direct current anode and cathode, the process called electrolysis, which caused the water to split into hydrogen and oxygen. Separate compressors took the products, the hydrogen put into a high-pressure bank for later discharge, since it was hazardous and there was no use for it, and submarines could be tracked by the stream of hydrogen emitted if it weren’t stored. The oxygen was compressed and put into the oxygen banks, huge high-pressure stainless steel bottles outside the hull that contained all the oxygen the crew would need for two days if the bomb decided to stop working.
An explosive device placed on the large-bore oxygen manifold at the top of the bomb, if detonated, would vent hydrogen and oxygen into the room, adding to the explosive power of the Semtex. Odds were, it would destroy half the zero three deck, she thought.
What gave her pause was that this particular task could lead to her own death. But she’d believed in her mission. For Mother Russia, she told herself, knowing how silly that would sound to a civilian.
The watchstander was surprised to see her. “Captain Anna,” he said, smiling. “What are you doing here?”
“It gets boring when all you boys are at action stations,” she said, smiling seductively. At least she hoped she looked seductive. “I thought maybe you could explain to me how we keep the air breathable down under the water.”
The mechanic smiled. “I’d love to.”
Anna waited through his overly technical explanation until he turned his back to her for a moment to point out the oxygen and hydrogen piping above the unit. As he did, she pulled the PSM pistol out of her right pocket, put the barrel to back of his skull and fired twice. The mechanic was dead before he fell to the deck. The report from the weapon was loud, but she doubted anyone would be near enough to hear it. It was academic anyway, she thought. The next loud sound from here would eliminate any other thoughts from the minds of the crew. And the damage would eradicate the evidence of what happened. The mechanic’s body would only be a vapor of blood and shards of bone by the time Anna’s task was complete.