“If the cow had the balls she would be the bull,” Shevenko said softly. “Never underestimate what an enemy might do.”
“How certain is your man that they intend to retaliate in this manner?” Admiral Zurahv asked.
“He is as certain as that photograph, Admiral. What gives his story greater credence is the fact that the President has not yet been informed of the loss of their submarine. Only a very few top naval officers know about it. They have decided on retaliation on their own.”
“Igor, old friend,” the Admiral said, “We both know the Americans would not dare to do such a thing. They never have. History proves that.”
“Don’t depend on history, Admiral. A small group of dedicated naval officers, let us say almost as dedicated to their cause as you are to ours, such a small group can insure secrecy of their actions and can act. They will retaliate.”
“No,” Zurahv said. “I do not agree. They know what we would do if they did that. We would put all our important people and most of our population into the air raid shelters and do what we should have done long ago, burn every major city in America, destroy every military installation. They have no civil defense, your own reports have proved that, no way of protecting their population as we have.” He filled his great chest with the cold air and let it out with a mighty whoosh. “And then, my friend, we will do the same thing to Mainland China!”
“I don’t disagree with your thesis, Admiral, but I would point out that we cannot keep our people in the shelters for very long. The psychiatrists and psychologists say that two weeks is the maximum before severe strain sets in. The American missile submarines, knowing their homeland is a charred waste, could wait longer than that before they loose their nuclear devastation on us.
“You make a good point,” Zurahv said. “But I still cannot accept the idea that a small group of naval officers will act this way. It is not the way they are trained, not the way they think.”
“The man who commands their submarines in the Atlantic is named Brannon. He is a ranking Admiral. Do you know him?”
“I have never met him, of course,” Zurahv said. “I know his record. A courageous and aggressive submarine commander in the Great War. A very good administrator since the war. A professional.”
“Aggressive, you say,” Shevenko murmured. He stooped and picked up a chunk of ice and tossed it into the middle of a bush heavy with wet snow. The ice chunk sent a cascade of snow tumbling to the ground.
“From small disturbances much downfall,” Shevenko said in a soft voice. “I must be getting back to my office, Comrade. Blagodar’yoo.” He used the colloquial “thank you” and smiled. “I trust that what I have told you, the picture I have given to you, will remain only with you?”
“You have my word, Igor, and my deepest thanks,” Zurahv said.
As soon as he returned to his office Admiral Zurahv called for the file on Vice Admiral Michael P. Brannon. He read it through slowly and then rang for his aide.
“Send a priority message to Captain Kovitz. Order him to clear his patrol area at once and proceed, submerged, to Tripoli. No shore leave for officers or crew. Further orders will follow. Tell my staff I want to see them here within the hour.”
Stefan Lubutkin laid Admiral Zurahv’s decoded message on Shevenko’s desk. “The Admiral has switched over to his new code, sir.”
“As long as he doesn’t know we can read it,” Shevenko said. He picked up the message, read it, and smiled.
Bob Wilson slept soundly on the flight to New York and dozed fitfully on the short flight to Washington. The Agency limousine was waiting for him at Washington’s National Airport. Carrying the wrapped box of cigars he went directly to Admiral Benson’s office.
“Cuban cigars,” he said. “Friend of mine at the UN gave them to me. I stopped there to cover the memo you sent.”
“How nice of him,” Benson said. He looked at Wilson. “How do they get Cuban cigars at the UN?”
“I think they come in through Switzerland. You want me to give you a debriefing now or wait?”
“Now,” Benson said. He uncapped a gold pen.
“I was met at the Lydda Airport and taken to Dr. Saul’s country place. He knew about the loss of the Sharkfin. There’s been too much radio traffic and they can read most of our codes, just as we can read theirs. Dr. Saul knew why the Soviets sank the Sharkfin.”
“That’s incredible!” Benson said. “I know the Mossad are good but to know something like that?”
Wilson shrugged. “Look at it this way, sir. The Mossad has an advantage no one else has. The Soviet Union is full of dissident Jews who want to emigrate to Israel and the Russians won’t let them go. Every once in a while the Mossad smuggles some of them out of Russia. Nearly all the Jews in the Soviet Union are sponges. They soak up all sorts of information and some of them feed it to Mossad agents in the hope they’ll be taken out of Russia. You get enough pieces in place and you can solve any jigsaw puzzle.”
“Did Dr. Saul know why the Soviets did this?”
Wilson repeated what Shevenko had told him. When he finished, Benson asked what his response had been.
“Dr. Saul has a top agent in Cairo. That guy knows the top KGB man in Cairo so word is going to get back to the KGB inside a day. I told Dr. Saul to tell the KGB that the only way out of this mess is to have Brezhnev call the President and tell him a terrible mistake has been made and that it won’t happen again.”
“What makes you think Brezhnev would do that?”
“I don’t know if he will,” Wilson said slowly. “But it’s worth a try. If he does then the whole mess stops right there. I think that the Kremlin will read the message pretty clearly. They play hard ball all the time. This is the sort of language they understand and pay attention to.”
Admiral Benson capped his pen. “I think we’d better go see Admiral Brannon. But I don’t think we should tell him that you passed the word that we might sink the Soviet submarine. No sense in getting his Irish up. I just thought of something. Suppose that Brezhnev does call the President? The whole overhead will fall on Admiral Brannon for not reporting the loss of the Sharkfin. “
Wilson ground out his cigarette in an ashtray. “That’s his worry, sir. He was the one who decided to keep this quiet, not us.”
Admiral Olsen reached for the coffee carafe and poured for himself and Mike Brannon. “What do you think, Mike? I don’t much like Wilson going off like that without telling us but it’s done now and we can’t undo it. Do you think Brezhnev will call? And if he does what the hell are you going to tell the President when he wants to know why he wasn’t told about the Sharkfin?”
“I don’t think he’ll call,” Brannon said. “If he does I can take the heat. I’ve got a hunch there’s a lot we’re not being told. That damned Soviet submarine was picked up on SOSUS heading back into the Mediterranean. God knows where she’ll end up, maybe in the Black Sea.” He drained his coffee cup.
“Get off a message to Dick Reinauer on the Orca. I want him to proceed at all possible speed and rendezvous with the Devilfish. Tell the Black Room I want an ID on every ship that goes through the Strait of Gibraltar, I want to be told that information no matter what the time of day or night. I’ll blockade that damned Strait and if that murdering bastard of a submarine comes out I’ll sink the son of a bitch!”
Admiral Zurahv finished telling his staff what Shevenko had told him an hour or so earlier and passed the photograph Shevenko had given him down the table.