“There she blows, bucko,” he called out. He increased airspeed, put the Viking into a shallow dive, and started closing.
Below, atop the Foxtrot’s conning tower, her captain pulled the stem of an English briar from his mouth and leaned into his binoculars, observing the Viking’s approach. “Clear the bridge! Dive! Dive!” he shouted, his voice blaring from loudspeakers in every compartment in the submarine.
The Klaxons wailed their call to action.
The crew scrambled to battle stations in response.
The captain and executive officer came down the ladder from the bridge into the control room, joining Gorodin, Beyalev, Deschin, and Uzykin, who had assembled in response to the alarm.
“What is it?” Deschin asked. “Something wrong?”
The captain shook his head. “Right on schedule as a matter of fact,” he replied without taking the pipe from his mouth. He slipped out of his parka, and dropped it onto a hook welded to the bulkhead. “We’re just playing the game,” he went on as he passed them. “We play it every time we make this run.” He smiled, took up his position at the chart table, and addressed the diving officer. “Negative trim. Take her to two hundred feet,” he ordered. “All ahead full.”
“The game?” Deschin inquired impatiently, turning to the men around him.
“The Americans expect us to dive and run,” Gorodin replied. “So”—he paused, inhaling deeply on one of the little wrinkled cigars he favored.
“So we dive and run,” Beyalev interjected, taking advantage of Gorodin’s hesitation. “We don’t want to break the pattern we’ve established and arouse their curiosity beyond the normal.”
“What would make them curious about this, this—” Deschin paused, gesturing to the interior of the sub as he searched for an appropriately derogatory word “—this rust bucket of obsolete technology?” he continued, finding it. Though a reliable workhorse, the diesel-powered Foxtrot class was designed in the fifties and was far from the cutting edge of Soviet naval power.
“Nothing,” Gorodin answered simply, smiling to indicate that that was the point.
“Precisely,” Beyalev snapped, launching into one of his self-aggrandizing tirades. “Once identified as such — and not a Viktor Class III whose superior speed, range, and armaments intimidate them — they will lose interest as they always do. Then”—he made a sharp turn in the air with his hand accompanied by a whistling noise—“back to base for the Viking.”
Deschin let an amused smile indicate no more explanation was required.
Beyalev nodded and reddened slightly, sensing he may have overdone it.
Uzykin, the KGB man, had said nothing throughout. He stole a glance at Beyalev, clearly pleased with his enthusiasm if not his penchant for verbosity.
On the surface, the sea rolled over the decks and conning tower of the Foxtrot as it submerged.
The Viking, jet engines whining, made a low strafing run. Doors in the underside of the fuselage yawned open, dropping sonobuoys into the Caribbean a thousand feet below. Hydrophones within the canister-shaped units began transmitting data that pinpointed the submarine’s course beneath the sea up to the Viking.
The tracking-monitor in Lowell’s console came alive with a series of green lines: each represented data from one of the sonobouys; each moved in a staccato rhythm across the screen; all intersected to reveal the position and course of the Foxtrot below.
Lowell tracked the sub for approximately half an hour. He ascertained its course was away from the United States mainland, verified its acoustic signature as that of a Soviet Foxtrot, and transmitted this data to ASW Forces Command.
As the Russians anticipated, once satisfied the vessel was an over-the-hill Foxtrot, and not a missile-carrying Viktor Class III, ASW Command called off the alert, ordering the Viking back to base.
Arnsbarger put the two-engine jet into a looping right turn.
Lowell sat staring pensively at his console. After a few moments, he leaned into the cockpit.
“Where do you think they go?” he asked.
Arnsbarger shrugged. “Search me,” he replied. “Probably Castro’s weekly nose candy junket to Bogota.”
Lowell laughed. “No kidding. This is what? The fourth, fifth time that we’ve tracked ’em. Same sub. Same course. Like every three, four months, right?”
Arnsbarger nodded, swung onto a heading for Pensacola, and pushed the throttles home.
The plane vibrated, then just hummed.
Lowell was deep in thought.
“I think I know,” he said.
“Know what?” Arnsbarger asked.
“I think I know how to find out where they go.”
Below, the captain of the Soviet Foxtrot waited until he was certain the Viking had broken contact, then changed to a northwesterly course. For the next six hours the Foxtrot headed at top speed into the waters of the Mexican Gulf.
Churcher’s helicopter had been cruising at wide open throttle for exactly two hours and thirty-eight minutes. He was thinking about how he would approach Deschin when the ever-changing graphic on the computerized navigation monitor indicated the Viper was directly over the rendezvous spot. Churcher put the chopper into a sweeping turn, and spiraled to a landing on the gently rolling sea.
A thousand yards due east, the Foxtrot’s periscope broke the surface and cut through the waters toward the helicopter.
Churcher shut down the turbine and released his harness, preparing to transfer to the submarine.
The black steel hull punched through the surface into a blazing mid-day sun. The Red Star on the conning tower glowed like an illuminated beacon.
Chapter Eight
A maroon-and-black hearse came through the big curve in Pembroke Street, skid chains drumming on the plowed road in a rhythmic dirge. It slowed at the bottom of a rise and turned into a drive lined with pines. The antenna flicked a low hanging bough, and snow crystals sparkled in the cold light. The hearse pulled next to a car at the far end of the drive, and crosshatched the snow until the rear door was aligned with the entrance to Sarah Winslow’s cottage.
Two men, bundled against the cold, got out and went inside. The walls of the tiny house shook as they clambered up the stairs and entered the bedroom.
The driver removed his visored hat. “How goes it, Doc?” he inquired a little too avidly.
The doctor, a boyish fellow with glasses, had made the call that brought them. “It’ll be a minute,” he replied in a curt tone that dulled the man’s fervor.
Sarah lay under the quilt in a fetal curl. The doctor was with her when she died early that morning, her hands clutching the envelope, her head filled with the smell of it — a mixture of ink and onionskin, and time. They triggered a flood of memories, enriching her last moments. Her life ended with a brilliant flash of light and rolling thunderclap — the same bolt of lightning she thought had ended it early in the spring of 1945, in Italy, during the war. The same one that gave rise to the events culminating in the letter.
The doctor gently pulled the envelope from between Sarah’s hands, slipped it into a pocket, and went downstairs to use the phone.
The men from the funeral home unfolded the large polypropylene bag with the broad zipper and sturdy handgrips they’d brought, and crossed to Sarah’s bed to take her.
Melanie Winslow’s loft was a bright, cheerful place in the mornings. Light streamed through the skylights, bathing a jungle of plants and illuminating the numerous dance posters on the walls.