‘I want reports as soon as the submarine is traced,’ he said, just loud enough for Grekov to hear. ‘Whatever happens, keep me up to date. We may be on the brink of war.’
‘It won’t come to that, I can assure you, Comrade President.’
‘No? We’ll see. Thank you, Admiral.’
Grekov levered himself from his chair and saluted curtly, and left without another word.
Savkin sat almost motionless for a full two minutes. Then he pulled a diary from his jacket pocket, and opened it at a page of telephone numbers. A capital ‘A’ had been written beside one number. ‘A’ for Astashenkov, Vice-Admiral Feliks, Deputy Commander of the Northern Fleet at Severomorsk.
Looking at the number struck terror into his heart. Savkin was no natural gambler. Now he faced the most perilous decision of his entire life. If he chose to play the one card he had left, the odds on him winning or losing were impossible to calculate.
He faced two choices; he could yield his power to the forces of conservatism and accept that it was impossible to reform the monolith of the Soviet economy; or he could provoke a naval war in the North Atlantic, in the desperate hope that it would sober the Soviet workers into knuckling down to further hardship and belt-tightening.
The problem was how to provoke a conflict large enough to have the desired effect, but small enough to be contained without the risk of escalation.
The burden of making such a choice seemed to crush him. Alone, he found it impossible to decide, yet was it fair to entrust it to anyone else?
He picked up the telephone. His secretary answered.
‘Would you call Foreign Minister Kalinin, and ask him to come to see me immediately?’
It was half an hour before Vasily Kalinin arrived from the Foreign Ministry, annoyed at having had to postpone a meeting with a delegation from Poland.
‘Vasily!’
Savkin grasped his friend by the shoulders.
‘The most powerful man in the Soviet Union is also the most lonely at times, my friend. It’s an old saying, but truer than ever at this moment. I’m glad you’re here.’
‘They told me it was most urgent.’
‘And so it is; so it is.’
They sat in a pair of high-backed, brocaded armchairs beside the window that overlooked the Kremlin courtyard.
‘The Americans are holding back their fleet. Grekov says they won’t come anywhere near our Kola bases.’
‘Ah! That’s unfortunate. President McGuire is showing more maturity than we expected. The way he reacted to the Rostov affair has made it a dead issue in the American media. The “crisis” we’d anticipated hasn’t materialized. I’m sorry.’
Kalinin had been joint architect of their plan.
‘And at the Politburo meeting on Friday? I’ll lose? The reformists will give up the struggle?’
‘It’s possible. I can’t say.’
Kalinin was lying to his friend. He knew it was already decided.
‘There are many who admire what the KGB has done in the Baltic,’ he explained. ‘They feel the old firm hand of authority at the centre is the only way to control our country. What the KGB has done to bring the dissidents into line, Gosplan must again do for the economy. That’s what they think.’
‘And you, Vasily? What do you think now?’
‘Me? I’m with you, carrying high the banner of change and reform first lifted aloft by Mikhail Gorbachev.’
At the flowery words, Savkin looked hard into Kalinin’s eyes. There was cynicism there and, he suspected, a hint of pity.
‘But, Nikolai, my eyesight is good enough to see that the tide changed long ago, and we are going to be cut off.’
The President sensed he was about to be abandoned. There was a weariness in Kalinin’s tone he’d not heard before.
‘Don’t give up just yet. There is one high rock that could save us from the tide. One you’ve not yet seen.’
Savkin’s voice had sunk close to a whisper.
‘Oh? Be sure it’s not a mirage.’
‘This came from Admiral Grekov. He’s not a man to imagine things.’
‘So, tell me about your rock.’
‘A British submarine is approaching our Kola naval bases, intent on attacking us. The commanding officer has taken leave of his senses and is defying orders. The British are unable to control him.’
Kalinin’s eyebrows arched.
‘If this is a joke, it’s a feeble one, Nikolai.’
‘Grekov doesn’t tell jokes.’
Kalinin whistled softly.
‘Wheew! Then I’m beginning to see what you mean. And Grekov? What’s he doing about it?’
‘Nothing! Wants to wait to see what happens. But he’s wrong. We must be ready to confront it.’
‘That could be dangerous. Very dangerous.’
‘Yes, but history shows it’s a risk that can be justified. Remember 1982? Mrs Margaret Thatcher’s regime was deeply unpopular. Heading for defeat. Then the British had their Falklands war. A small, limited war. Afterwards Mrs Thatcher and her reformist policies were transformed.’
Kalinin’s eyes appeared to grow ever wider.
‘You want a war? With the British? That would be most reckless.’
Savkin felt disappointment. He’d expected a more positive reaction.
‘But the British would be shown to have started it. Think of the impact on our people. They’d rally behind us, as we justifiably fight off the aggressor and give him a bloody nose!’
‘Possibly.’
‘What’s the alternative? To let our country turn its back on the chance to compete with the capitalists on equal terms? To lock our people away for another twenty years until someone else has the courage to look for change?’
Savkin paced back and forth, waving his fist to emphasize his point. Kalinin watched coolly. He admired his leader’s devotion to the cause of reform, but recognized that whatever Savkin decided, it would be out of desperation, and that made him apprehensive.
‘You may be right, Nikolai. It may be the answer. But openly to seek a war is not a gamble I’d have the courage to take. If the British commander is crazy enough to attack us, then we have every right to respond. But I suspect you have a different plan in mind — some way of provoking a fight. If that’s the case, then it’s better you don’t tell me about it. I’d have to advise you against it.’
Savkin’s pacing had brought him to the window.
So, he was on his own. He would have to take the decision alone, after all. He’d known it would be so. Supporting him in such a gamble was too much to ask of any friend, however close.
‘Then I must ask one last favour of you, Vasily,’ Savkin ventured, spinning round.
‘Yes?’
‘To forget that this conversation ever took place.’
Inside the command bunker of the Red Banner Northern Fleet, Vice-Admiral Feliks Astashenkov listened to the briefing officer with close attention.
The lights were dimmed in the cavernous room, and a fine beam from the pointer in the briefer’s hand highlighted the areas on the wall map where the search for the Truculent was being conducted.
From longitude 32 degrees, in a line north of the Soviet border with Norway, the anti-submarine surface force stretched its tentacles westwards. The carriers Moskva and Kiev were operating their helicopters round the clock, the Captain-Lieutenant told him, dunking sonar transducers into the sea.
Feliks doubted it was truly like that; few of the pilots were qualified for night flying from a deck.
Several possible contacts had been made, over a wide area, the briefer said. Feliks doubted that, too. Whales probably.
The British Nimrod aircraft were already operating east of the Kiev/Moskva group, almost due north of the Kol’skiy Zaliv. That’s where the Truculent would be now. Almost at the sanctuary gates of the Northern Fleet.