“I moved her fifty miles to the north. Devilfish is near her. I didn’t want Medusa too close to the Sharkfin in case that rogue submarine came back. The captain of that damned submarine might be off his rocker. If he came back and saw Medusa there he might take a crack at her.
“Let me know what Lloyds says about that freighter’s next port of call,” Brannon walked to the chart on his wall and studied it as Olsen left.
Bob Wilson’s secretary stepped out of her office. “Marjorie just rang me. Admiral Benson is on his way down the hall to see you. Button your shirt collar and get your tie back up where it belongs. I’ll get some coffee. Do all sailors drink coffee all the time?”
“Yup,” Wilson said. He cinched up his tie and straightened up the mass of paper on his desk. Admiral Benson walked in the door as Wilson’s secretary put two cups of coffee on his desk. The Admiral smiled his thanks and sat down in a chair beside the desk.
“You hear anything from the Mossad as yet?”
“Just conversation,” Wilson said. “Dr. Saul calls every day. Their reports confirm what we’re hearing. A lot of in-fighting going on in the Politburo. We can make a good guess what it’s all about.”
“No indication of whether Brezhnev will call the President?”
“We’ll know the minute he does,” Wilson said. “We’ve got a tap on the hot line so we’ll know as soon as he calls.”
Admiral Benson’s face went white. “My God!” he said in a half whisper. “You can’t be serious! The Agency hasn’t tapped the President’s hot line to the Soviet Union!”
“We did that the day it was installed,” Wilson said. “It would surprise you to know how mealy-mouthed some of our big, bold Presidents really are. I think what this country needs is a President who knows all the four-letter words and who’d say them out loud to the Russians.” He grinned at Admiral Benson.
“I’d love to have a camera in place in the Kremlin if we had a President like that and watch the interpreter’s face when he had to tell Brezhnev that the President of the United States just told him to go fuck himself.”
Admiral Benson shook his head like a prize fighter who had just been hit with a hard left hook. “When is the deadline for that phone call?”
“Tomorrow evening, sir. But we shouldn’t be too rigid on that. You’ve got a seven hour time difference between Moscow and here. The Politburo likes to meet in the evening, which makes it early afternoon here, but sometimes they meet until late at night. Which means they might not take any action until the following day, Moscow time.”
“So we wait,” Benson said.
“Yup,” Wilson said. “And for your information, sir, Admiral Brannon has ordered another attack submarine to join up with that one he sent to where the Sharkfin was sunk.”
CHAPTER 8
Admiral Brannon stopped at the desk of his Chief Yeoman and took off his muffler and his heavy uniform overcoat. The Chief looked at his desk notepad.
“You’ve got a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at lunch, sir. One call this morning from the Sub Base at New London. They want to know when Sharkfin will arrive. I told them you’d get back to them sometime today. Admiral Olsen is in your office, sir.” Brannon nodded his thanks and went in to his office.
“Morning, John,” he said to Olsen. “You get any information on that Soviet freighter from Lloyds?”
“Her original port of call was Odessa with tobacco and citrus fruits from Libya, Mike. Her skipper notified Lloyds that his owners had diverted him to France, to Brest.”
“Doesn’t figure,” Brannon said. “He could have gone across the Mediterranean and offloaded in Marseilles. Saved a lot of sea time and fuel. Fencer said that freighter had worked with Soviet subs off the Aleutians, that’s where they got her footprint. He said the freighter was working Soviet submarines with sonar. My guess is that the Russians have sent her down Sharkfin’s course to find out if the Medusa put down sonar buoys around the Sharkfin.”
“Might be that they didn’t believe what Wilson told to his contact in Israel,” Olsen said slowly. “They want to run a check for themselves.” He looked at Brannon.
“The deadline for that phone call from Brezhnev is tonight, Mike.”
The red light on Bob Wilson’s scrambler telephone flashed and then began to blink. Wilson picked up the telephone handset and heard Isser Bernstein’s voice.
“I don’t have good news, Bob,” Bernstein said. “We have learned that the person who is supposed to make that telephone call has been sick in bed for the past week. He has a bad case of Asian Flu.” Bernstein chuckled. “I think that’s a sort of poetic justice, Asian Flu. He has seen no one but his doctors, taken no phone calls since he got sick.”
“You’re sure?” Wilson asked.
“He has been under the care of the best chest man in his country. The doctor is of my faith and is an old friend of mine. I am sure. What I think you should do, old friend, is to put everything on the back burner, as you people say. Delay events as long as you can.”
“I agree,” Wilson said. “Shalom. “He put the handset back on its cradle and sat staring at the wall of his office, debating in his mind if he should tell Admiral Benson what Bernstein had told him or to let events take their course.
A few minutes after Wilson had talked with Isser Bernstein, Stefan Lubutkin stuck his head around the door into Shevenko’s office. “If there is nothing more, Comrade Director?”
“No, nothing. It’s the ballet tonight, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. And thank you. Until tomorrow, Comrade Director.”
“Have you got a pretty girl to take to the ballet, Stefan?” Shevenko called out. “I understand that girls are quicker to yield after they have watched the male ballet dancers perform.” Lubutkin blushed and withdrew his head.
Later that evening, during the second act of the ballet, Lubutkin left his seat and went through a heavily brocaded curtain that concealed an exit door. He slipped through the door and stood in the dark alleyway outside the theatre. He saw the black limousine and walked to it and opened the door and got into the back seat. Admiral Zurahv smiled at him.
“Your boss lied to us, Stefan,” the Admiral said. “The Americans did not find their submarine. If they had done so they would have marked the spot with sonar buoys. There are no such buoys.”
“The picture?” Lubutkin said. “It looked genuine.”
“It did,” the Admiral said. “But it could have been faked. I am having it analyzed now by one of our photo experts.”
“He lies to everyone,” Lubutkin said. “And he lies about everyone. He lied to me. He told me he went to East Berlin and that is where he got the picture and the information. Our man in East Berlin never saw him.”
“He did leave Moscow,” Zurahv said. “One of my people saw him board the airliner, saw him return. Where did he go?”
“I think to West Berlin,” Lubutkin said. “I think he went there to see a woman. He is a notorious one for women.”
“A woman?” Admiral Zurahv said genially. “He doesn’t know what a treasure he has in his own office. You’ll stop by my apartment after the ballet, little one?”
“Now, if you like, darling,” Lubutkin said. “The ballet is boring.” His slim hand found its way under the flap of the Admiral’s greatcoat. “You’re such a big bear of a man,” he murmured. The Admiral grinned and picked up the car’s telephone and dialed a number. “Let me talk, you naughty boy,” he murmured.